The Blues Magazine - Issue 15

Page 1

‘‘Johnny was in the same class as B.B. King and Muddy Waters. When you heard him play, all talk of colour disappeared.’’ Joe Perry, Aerosmith


features

34 48 56

Johnny Winter

Winter biographer and a host of contemporary blues talent pay tribute to the blues icon and slide guitar genius.

Nine Below Zero

We celebrate the 35th anniversary of the British R&B legends.

Joanne Shaw Taylor

The ex-pat Brummie tells The Dirty Truth of reuniting with SRV producer Jim Gaines.

62 66 70 76

Philip Sayce

The next big thing in bluesrock on the release of new album Influence

Brian Setzer

“Rockabilly should be bigger than blues!” The Stray Cat takes a swing...

Danny Bryant

Brit road warrior on his new album... and filling Walter Trout’s shoes.

34 Johnny Winter

The life and, spectacularly crazy, times of the sadly departed blues legend...

56

4 classicrockmagazine.com

philip sayce

From Live At The Regal to At Newport 1960. The live releases that changed the world.

84 88

Jimmy Thomas

The former member of Ike Turner’s Kings Of Rhythm looks back...

Crow Black Chicken

The hirsute band of Irish blues rockers on their pulverising new record Rumble Shake.

84

Jimmy Thomas

austin hargrave, rob monk

Joanne shaw taylor

62

Greatest live albums


August July 2014 • Issue 15 14

regulArs

12

Testify

All the latest news from the world of blues, including a status update from Walter Trout. You’ll also eyeball interviews with The Devil Makes Three, Rouge, Ghost Wolves, Ryley Walker, Los Pacaminos, Sons Of The Delta, Bobby Patterson, Radio Moscow and the wonderful Naomi Shelton, leader of The Gospel Queens.

26

Call & Response

Ex-Whitesnake legend Bernie Marsden talks about his new album Shine, working with David Coverdale, Joe Bo and Cherry Lee Mewis, and the classic song that made him a rock ’n’ roll immortal.

28

Under The Influence

30

Cuttin’ Heads

James Williamson, guitarist with legendary proto-punk band The Stooges, reveals the blues records that changed his life as a kid in 60s Detroit.

One song. Two great versions. Which is best? This time around Skip James and Cream slug it out with their killer cuts of I’m So Glad. Veteran journalist and blues obsessive Charles Shaar Murray is your referee.

130

28

First Time I Met The Blues

From soaking up records by B.B., Albert and Freddie King to hanging out with Johnny Winter, Texan fusion guitarist Eric Johnson, considered one of the greatest players in the world, reveals the role that the blues played in the development of his exceptional career.

James Williamson

Reviews

rob monk, getty

All the CDs and DVDs you need to feed your blues obsession, reviewed by our team of aficionados.

albums

95

reissues 104

lives

113

classicrockmagazine.com 5



johnny winter tribute

Johnny Winter biographer Mary Lou Sullivan pays respects to the recently departed Texan legend with a personalised account of the man behind the myth. It got crazy and then some...

getty

Words: Mary Lou Sullivan hen Johnny put himself into the River Oaks Hospital in New Orleans for heroin addiction in June 1971, celebrities didn’t get treatment for alcohol and drug addiction and rehab facilities catering to them didn’t exist. One music magazine reporting Johnny’s hiatus from touring referred to him as a “frail Texas albino bluesman-turnedrock-superstar-turned-mental-hospital-inmate.” But Johnny saw what drugs had done to his lover Janis Joplin and his friend Jimi Hendrix, and “went for help because I didn’t want to die.” He kicked heroin cold turkey and suffered through three months of physical withdrawal and another three months of psychological withdrawal. “The mental part was the worst part,” he said. “When you’re tryin’ to get off of heroin, it messes with your head. It’s horrible, just horrible.” Not being able to play guitar was extremely difficult, so as soon as he earned passes to leave

the hospital, he sat in with a rock band named Thunderhead. The friendships forged during that dark period of his life led to musical collaborations with guitarist Pat Rush and drummer Bobby T (Torello) who became a lifelong friend. Johnny’s resolve to stay away from heroin led to an increase in his drinking, which he tried to curtail by drinking liquor that he didn’t like. “I drank a lot of nasty-tasting things because I figured I wouldn’t drink so much. I drank bourbon and grapefruit juice. That must have been the worse possible combination and I still drank a lot of it. Scotch is nasty tasting too.” In fact, a wild night in the French Quarter when Rush and Johnny attempted to sit in with a band was a result of drinking copious amounts of Chivas Regal scotch. “We sat at a table at The Ivanhoe and Johnny leaned over and said, ‘Pat, promise me that you won’t let me get me get up and play. I’m too drunk − I can’t stand up,’” Rush recalls. “We’re in classicrockmagazine.com 49 35


there five minutes, and the band says, ‘We see Johnny Winter, let’s get him up to play a song!’. Johnny stands up, ‘Yeah!’ I pull him back in the chair and say, ‘Johnny, no. You made me promise. You’re too drunk, you can’t stand up, don’t do it.’ He said, ‘Come on, Pat, just one song. I’ll sit on a stool and sing and you play guitar.’ So we got up and he sat on a stool. He had his top hat on and his fringed jacket. He leaned back to hit this note and the stool fell backwards, he fell into the drums and knocked them over on top of the drummer. That was pretty much the end of the song. I had to pick him up off the floor and out of the place − it was hilarious.” When I first interviewed Johnny by phone in 1984, he had just released Guitar Slinger on Alligator Records and celebrated his 40th birthday by getting the Screamin’ Demon tattoo on his chest. Impressed by his honesty, affinity for storytelling, philosophical approach to life and self-effacing sense of humor, I set up another interview for a Johnny Winter special on my WCCC radio show in Hartford so I could meet him in his tour bus after the show. Smoking his trademark Kool and sipping on a glass of vodka in the back of the bus, he pulled out a small velvet sack and proudly displayed the last remaining slide from a 12-foot piece of tubing he bought at a plumbing-supply store in 1965. When I asked him about how he’d practised his scream by yelling into a pillow as a kid, he grabbed a small brown pillow off the seat and screamed into it. He was such a charming, A teenage Johnny under his first guitar collection

I didn’t even know I was an albino until a neighbourhood kid started shouting ‘whitey’ and ‘albino’ at me.

It was on the day before September 11, 2001 that Slatus and I finally entered into a handshake agreement (actually he kissed my hand) to make me Johnny’s biographer. It took another 15 months before Slatus made it official. He said he had talked to other writers, but chose me because “You have heart and you really care about Johnny.” When I began interviewing Johnny on Saturday nights in his home in January 2003, he stood up when I entered the room like a true Southern gentleman. It was difficult to tell which one of us was more nervous, so I made small talk with his wife Susan, telling her I had seen a great photo of her with Johnny and Muddy on Muddy Waters’ website. I printed and framed it for my next visit, but her reaction wasn’t what I had expected. “That’s not me,” she said, handing the photo back and giving Johnny a dirty look. To her credit, she said it wasn’t my fault and that it had been a sweet gesture. I didn’t know what to do after she gave him another dirty look and stormed out of the room. So I set up my tape recorder on the couch next to Johnny, sat down at the other end, and said I was sorry. “Yeah, that was a drag,” he said in his inimitable Southern drawl. When I asked if he forgave me, he smiled and said yes, and I began the interview. It took time to develop a friendship with Johnny; at first I was just another journalist asking questions. I knew we’d never develop a bond if our conversations were one-sided and my visits ended when I shut off the recorder. I had a long, late-night drive home and drank water during our interviews while he drank Absolut vodka on the rocks and chain-smoked Kools. I didn’t think my teetotaling ways would help break the ice between us, so when we talked about the Johnny Winter And album, I shared my own experiences with “Cheap Tequila,” which made him see me in a new light. I knew he always had multiple women so I brought a friend backstage at one of his shows and introduced him as “my other boyfriend.” The big grin on Johnny’s face told me I was speaking his language. Once I started hanging out after our interviews and talking to him like a friend, Johnny proudly showed me his extensive record collection in a custom-made cabinet that took up a wall of his living room. His collection included hundreds of vintage blues albums, Alan Lomax’s field recordings, and Firesign Theater comedy albums from the 1970s. When he said he couldn’t listen to them because he didn’t have a turntable, it really bothered me. Johnny was legally blind, had a hip injury that made it difficult for him to get around, but he couldn’t pass the time listening to his favorite blues artists? It was unconscionable. Determined to help my new friend, I bought him a turntable but left it in my car until we finished our interview the following week. When I told him I had an Easter gift for him, he figured it was a chocolate bunny (he loved chocolate). When he looked in the box and saw the turntable, he got so excited that he reminded me of a little kid at Christmas. Trying to put the belt on the spindle was like the blind (literally) leading the blind, so I promised to return with a friend to hook it up the next day. Johnny is a creature of routine, and one of his routines was his refusal to do interviews before 9pm. After he recorded Guitar Slinger for Alligator records, the label set up a phone interview with Japanese Guitar Player magazine. But the writer

dennis drugan, getty, rob monk

36 classicrockmagazine.com

larger-than-life character; I felt I wanted to know more about him. Johnny’s life story had all the ups and downs and twists and turns of great literature and, in 1985, I approached his manager Teddy Slatus about writing his biography. But Slatus said Johnny was still young and they wanted to wait until he won a Grammy. I kept asking and he kept turning me down, but I never abandoned my quest. I was determined to tell Johnny’s story with his input during his lifetime, rather than leave it to biographers forced to rely on the often self-serving memories of peripheral players after he was gone. As I always say, “Everybody has a Johnny Winter story and some of them are even true.”


johnny winter tribute

HIs first band Johnny and the Jammers, with brother Edgar (right)

calculated the time zone differential incorrectly and called at the end of the two-hour block of time. Johnny sat by his phone and listened as the writer left a message on his answering machine but didn’t pick up because he wasn’t calling at the right time. But, in this case, Johnny wanted me to come back as early as possible. When we returned the next day, his custom box of carefully indexed 45s was ready. He played Okie Dokie Stomp by Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and my requests: School Day Blues and You Know I Love You from his first record, and Birds Can’t Row Boats, which he called “a song makin’ fun of Bob Dylan.” That’s how I discovered his food routine – when he abruptly said, “Susan, get my sandwiches,” and I knew we had to leave. “There’s something about food and Johnny that happens with everybody,” Mark Epstein, one of Johnny’s bass players, later told me with a laugh. “You call Johnny up after six months, you have this great conversation and halfway through some sentence, he says, ‘I gotta eat dinner, got to go, bye.’ Click. It could be the end of the world, it could be the Pope; everything stops. He had a schedule and it had to be adhered to.” Johnny, however, was so overjoyed to be able to listen to his records, he decided our interviews could start at 8pm. Another facet of Johnny’s schedule was watching The Simpsons TV show every night at 7pm. Johnny became a fan after he and his brother

Edgar were featured in the 1997 Simpsons Halloween Special. Weekly band rehearsals and even the rehearsal with producer Dick Shurman for Johnny’s I’m a Bluesman CD had to end by 7pm. So when I saw a pair of bright yellow fuzzy

joe bonamassa

“Johnny Winter’s playing was on fire; he was one of the best traditional blues guys with this fire and passion and absolute reverence for the masters that came before him. The pride of Beaumont, Texas. That’s Johnny Winter right there. He was the reason I bought a Gibson Firebird. Yes, his career was full of ups-and-downs, personal problems and some bad management but the one thing that’s always been consistent is the music. He was always able to nail it. As a slide player he had impeccable intonation. It was almost an extension of his voice: loud, punchy, and right in your face. His sound came storming out of the gate like a thorough-bred racehorse let loose at the Kentucky Derby! Rest in peace Johnny Dawson Winter III. A son of Texas and a son of the Blues. There will never be another one like you. Thanks for teaching me to play the slide and to use the front pickup. A giant loss for blues guitar and all music in general.”

Homer Simpson slippers with bulging white eyes, I couldn’t resist. Johnny surprised and charmed me the next week when he answered his front door wearing those slippers. He still had them on at the end of the night when he played me his fiery rendition of B.B. King’s It’s My Own Fault on the Fillmore East Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper: The Lost Concert Tapes 12-13-68 CD that had just been released. What a sweetheart. A guitar-player friend who had toured with Debbie Davis asked if Johnny wore clothes when I interviewed him. I thought that was an odd question, but mentioned it to Johnny the next week. He laughed, said he didn’t usually wear clothes around the house, and told me a story about getting into trouble for reciting the Pledge of Allegiance naked at summer camp as a kid. When I thanked him for wearing clothes during my visits, he smiled and said “You’re welcome.” But I knew better than to ask him about the tattoo on his thigh when we talked about his body art. Despite Johnny’s well-publicised wild and crazy side, he also had a sweetness and a childlike nature. I’ll never forget the night he brought me upstairs to the room where he kept his awards, hats, music books, and music memorabilia. His gold record for Johnny Winter And Live; framed Grammy certificates for producing Muddy Waters recordings Hard Again, I’m Ready, and Muddy “Mississippi” Waters Live; and Grammy classicrockmagazine.com 37


es and m a J a t Guy, Et ntdown of the y d d u B cou ng, d... B.B. Ki t it out in our nged the worl , ha figh ailstone others records thatlicce Clark, JamieidHW t es A Dav es erlain, itchell, M d E live blWuords: Rich ChaamarbM , urray Sh Charles

76 classicrockmagazine.com


live albums

23

22

Mike Bloomfield

Luther Allison

1998

1996

Live At The Old Waldorf

Where Have You Been/Live At Montreux

A hot property he might have been in the mid60s with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and Bob Dylan on Highway 61 Revisited, but by the 70s Mike Bloomfield maintained a lower profile and the heroin addiction hat would eventually take his life. Yet Live At The Old Waldorf, compiled from a 1976/1977 San Francisco nightclub residency, with a single ’74 radio session cut, captures Bloomfield on fearless form. Bloomfield always strived for undiscovered musical corners to explore and Bad Luck Baby and The Sky Is Crying foreground his quicksilver slide playing while Buried Alive In The Blues has a groove that’s ten miles wide.

This collection spans eighteen years and Luther Allison’s four appearances at the famous Swiss festival. Beginning in 1976, Luther bites into Gambler’s Blues and Sweet Home Chicago with velocity and venom while Little Red Rooster finds his guitar squawking angrily at saxophonist Richard Drake who fires right back. Sole ’83 cut, The Sky Is Crying, maintains boiling point before the tracks from the ’84 show tap into a more laidback R&B vibe as Luther joins forces with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. The Memphis Horns join Luther on stage in 1994 to cut Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, while Bad Love closes the record with a big, brooding blues.

david west

david west

20

John Mayall The Turning Point 1969

getty x10, rex

21

Recorded at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East in New York on July 12, 1969, after the break-up of the Bluesbreakers two months earlier – a result of Mayall suggesting his then guitarist Mick Taylor as the replacement for the recently deceased Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones – The Turning Point places Mayall in an intimate acoustic setting and he clearly relishes every moment. Liberated from the straitjacket of the electric guitarled Chicago blues band style, he draws on jazz and folk with help from acoustic guitarist Jon Mark – best known for working with

Marianne Faithfull – bassist Steve Thompson and saxist/flautist Johnny Almond. Mayall, of course, plays his customary blues harp and contributes slide. He also wrote or co-wrote the seven-song set, and produced and designed the album cover artwork. Eddie Kramer, who’d previously worked with Hendrix and concurrently Led Zeppelin, engineered it. Room To Move, a frenetic harmonica wailing rave-up is the stand out, but everything is ace here from the poignant I’m Gonna Fight For You JB, a tribute to JB Lenoir who died in 1967, to the rousing Don’t Waste My Time. Unsurprisingly, Mayall still revisits songs from the album in his live shows today. Alice Clark

Brit icon delivers first class Mayall.

Alexis Korner’s Breakdown Group Blues From The Roundhouse 1957

Documenting the birth of British blues prior to the formation of Blues Incorporated, Blues From The Roundhouse features the first recordings of Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner, concentrating on songs from Leadbelly’s repertoire, including Leaving Blues and Boll Weevil. While the skiffle arrangement of Skip To My Lou betrays their Britishness, this is no document of faltering first steps; renditions of Ella Speed and Roundhouse Stomp reveal the successful adoption of the nuances and tonalities of American blues. Davies passed away in 1964 aged 31, but these recordings were the wellspring for every British blues musician that followed.

19

Joe Bonamassa

A New Day Yesterday Live 2002

Unsurprisingly given his penchant for life on the road and seemingly compelling urge for releasing new records, Joe Bonamassa has put out a whopping 11 live albums (including the four Tour De Force albums released earlier this year) to date. This 2002 effort was the first of those 11, and it’s yet to be topped. Recorded as Bonamassa toured his debut record back in late 2001, A New Day Yesterday Live is a 70-minute set which reminds us of the raw, rough around the edges but absolutely electrifying artist that he was back in his early days.

david west

Bonamassa originals like I Know Where I Belong, Miss You, Hate You and Colour And Shape nestle neatly alongside covers of Free’s Walk In My Shadow and Cradle Rock by Rory Gallagher, among several more as this stripped-back three-piece band (completed by bassist Eric Czar and drummer Kenny Kramme) deliver in spades. The mighty groove of Steppin’ Out/Rice Pudding and Joe’s soulful soloing on the Jethro Tull track from which the record takes its name are joys to behold. He may have developed into a more polished all-round musician since teaming up with producer Kevin Shirley, but this is Bonamassa off the leash and at his very best. Rich Chamberlain

Joe Bo: off the leash...

classicrockmagazine.com 77


18

audience who sing along, happily and unprompted, to the set list; their contribution to Natural Disaster being particularly vocal. Backed by Michael Freeman on bass, Dumpy Rice on piano and Maxwell Schauf on drums, Mack switches from roadhouse rockers to blue-eyed soul in the blink of an eye. This is the man who inspired everyone from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Keith Richards and when you hear him tear it up on the closer, Cincinnati Jail, it’s not hard to see why. Attack of the Killer V proved to be his last full release. Well, if you’re going to go out, go out in style – and Mack went out on a high with this one.

Lonnie Mack Attack Of The Killer V 1990

Even if you’d actually heard of it, the suburb of Berwyn, Illinois, might not be the first place you would expect to cut a landmark live album, but it nonetheless proved to be fertile ground for Lonnie Mack when he took to the stage there in December 1989 to produce this throbbing live set for Bruce Iglauer’s mighty Alligator label. Although he was something of a veteran by the time he recorded this, his first and so-far only live album, Mack was at the top of his game, and held nothing back in front of his very loud and very drunk

Jamie Hailstone

Mack attacks his iconic Flying V.

17

Walter Trout

No More Fish Jokes 1992 “I feel like rocking, how about you?” screams Walter Trout as he rips into False Alarm, the third track on this 1992 magnum opus, re-released on vinyl earlier this year to celebrate his 25th year as a solo artist. Ok, as battle cries go it’s not quite up there with “Yippee ki-yay” but it sums up the Trout live experience perfectly. The bulk of the 12-track album was cut live at the Skanderborg Festival in Denmark on August 10, 1991, with three songs culled from a separate show at the De Hanehof in the Netherlands the following year. To paraphrase the late Eric Morecambe, you really

can’t see the join between the two shows, as Trout and his band breathe new life into Robert Johnson’s Dust My Broom and Dylan’s Girl From The North County, as well as Trout originals, such as Life In The Jungle. The fiery interplay between Trout and his original bassist and late friend, Jimmy Trapp, keyboard player, Danny “Mongo” Abrams and drummers Frank Continola and Bernie Pershey (the latter was behind the drums for the De Hanehof show), prove that despite the rather naff title, No More Fish Jokes is no laughing matter. It’s Trout at his very best. Off the scale, you might say... Jamie Hailstone

Fishy fingering. Trout throttles his Fender Strat.

16

15

14

Buddy Guy

Memphis Slim

Freddie King

1988

1990

1974

Drinkin’ TNT ‘N’ Smokin’ Dynamite

Live At Ronnie Scott’s

Despite his ability to burn up stages with the absolute best of ’em, Buddy Guy is a consummate backup man who could subsume his ego when it came time to let someone else shine. Junior Wells? Not so much. Here be proof. Cut at the ’74 Montreux Festival with an all-star band assembled by Bill Wyman and featuring Pinetop Perkins, the guy with the harp struts ands blusters his way through his hits and standards nicely enough, but it’s Buddy who would’ve blown the roof off the joint with the incendiary Ten Years Ago and When You See The Tears From My eyes. Awesome. Epic. This is blues you can’t lose and the shit that cain’t be beat.

Audiences at Ronnie Scott’s in London have grown accustomed to seeing living legends up close and personal but this ’86 concert was still a rare chance to see a master craftsman at work. Joined on stage by a crack band, including Paul Jones on harmonica and Danny Adler on guitar, and with a brief appearance by fellow pianist Slim Gaillard and the I Dance Jazz group (the clue is in the name), the mood is one of hushed reverence, as Slim performs classics like 400 Years, Stepping Out and Please Send Me To Love. At the end, as Slim shuffles into the audience, the look on their faces says it all – Ronnie Scott’s has just witnessed something truly special.

charles shaar murray

Jamie Hailstone

78 classicrockmagazine.com

Live At The Electric Ballroom

Recorded two years before his death in 1976, Live At The Electric Ballroom actually opens with King playing an acoustic session for a Dallas radio station, with masterful renditions of That’s All Right and Dust My Broom. The live cuts from The Electric Ballroom in Atlanta find Freddie cooking with gas right from the start with a belting version of Big Leg Woman. He boogies hard on Key To The Highway, with superb backing from Alvin Hemphill on organ; and there’s a funky cut of Let The Good Times Roll and a slow burn through Ain’t Nobody’s Business. The concert wraps up with a run through Hide Away Medley that sizzles like a Texas T-bone. David west


live albums

12

13

Howlin’ Wolf

Live And Cookin’ (At Alice’s Revisited) 1972

Stevie Ray Vaughan And Double Trouble Live at Montreux 82/85 2001

Etta James Rocks The House 1964

Howlin’ Wolf was still capable of bringing down the house in the latter stages of his career, as this 1972 performance shows. It takes a while for the man to build up steam but when he hits his stride on tracks like I Had A Dream and Call Me The Wolf, the results are truly electrifying. For a man who was not in the best of health, he could still wail with the best of them – not least on eight-minute epic The Big House. The band, including Hubert Sumlin on guitar, lock into the groove from the get-go, but, at times, are let down by a dodgy sound mix. But what it lacks in audio precision, Live and Cookin’ more than makes up for with sheer blues mojo.

Not just one of the greatest live albums, this twoconcert set is also one of the most controversial. Well, the first half is, anyway. The ’82 appearance of SRV and Double Trouble (drummer Chris Layton and bassist Tommy Shannon), a masterclass in groove, musicianship and style, was greeted with boos by the festival’s audience. The juxtaposition of such a superb show with a jeering audience makes for captivating listening. When Stevie and Co returned in ’85 as headliners there were no such sniffs of discontent. They delivered another flawless set, this time getting the appreciation and respect they deserved.

A storming rival to James Brown’s Live At The Apollo, Rocks The House captures Etta’s raucous set taken from two nights at Nashville’s New Era Club in September 1963 with a swinging band: tenor saxist Gavrell Cooper, organist Vonzell Cooper, bassist Marion Wright, guitarist David Walker, drummers Freeman Brown and Richard Waters. As the tapes roll, Etta launches into Something’s Got A Hold On Me, and the place erupts. The remainder mixes Chess hits like Seven Day Fool with covers like Ray Charles’ What’d I Say. Barrett Strong’s Money (That’s What I Want) and Jessie Hill’s Ooh Poo Pah Doo, driven by a Baptist-like fervour, shake the very foundations.

Jamie Hailstone

Rich Chamberlain

Alice Clark

10

John Lee Hooker Live At The Café Au Go-Go 1967

getty x3

11

The Boogie Man spent much of the later 60s working harder and harder to light his fire under progressively soggier backup ensembles, but here he’s heard with one of the best and most sympathetic bands of his extraordinary career. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his own band, but Muddy Waters’s, even including Otis Spann on pianner and the Big Mud himself on the electric guitar. The programme included One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer, Jesse James and Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive, and the result was the kind of richly-textured swamp-deep blues which has

you wondering how things would’ve gone if the alteration of ‘this world’ to ‘these blues’ tells notoriously introvert lone-cat Hooker had put as what you need to know about the differences much effort and energy into maintaining a firstbetween both men, and the similarities. Charles Shaar Murray class regular band as Muddy did. It’s not exactly an unflawed performance: the opening of Jesse James finds drummer Francis Clay expecting a different song and crashing in with a VERY different beat, One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer is even more chaotic than the original Chess studio cut and there are some extremely sour tuning discrepancies between the four guitarists (Sammy Lawhorn and Luther Johnson alongside Muddy and John Lee), with Hooker himself the prime culprit. Nevertheless, the degree of emotional rapport between Hooker and the band – particularly the astonishing Spann, who’s right at the top of his game throughout – is nothing short of extraordinary. As is Hooker himself (‘Singing for people who feel the way I do’) and premiering a song he’d sing for the rest of his life, Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive. The title is a riff The Boogie Man: on a Never Get Out Of This World a chaotic but brilliant live Alive; a ’52 Hank Williams number performer. that ironically snagged number 1 shortly after his death: Hooker’s classicrockmagazine.com 79


Subscribe Today! At long last you can now subscribe to The Blues Magazine! Never again will you miss an issue – get it delivered direct to your door and save 25% on the shop price! That’s right – subscribe for only £23.99 every six months and you’ll save £2 on every issue!

Order online at www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/BLUP11 Or call 0844 848 2852 quoting ref. BLUP11 Lines open Mon-Fri 8am-9.30pm, Sat 8am-4pm. TERMS AND CONDITIONS: Savings compared to buying 8 full priced issues from UK newsstand. This offer is for new UK print subscribers paying by Direct Debit only.You will receive 8 issues in a year. Full details of the Direct Debit guarantee are available upon request. If you are dissatisfied in any way you can write to us or call us to cancel your subscription at any time and we will refund you for all unmailed issues. Prices correct at point of print and subject to change. For full terms and conditions please visit: myfavm.ag/magterms Offer ends: December 31, 2014.


Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.