This week marks Friday Blues Fix's 200th post!!!! Now that's hard to believe! When I started doing this almost four years ago, I figured it would be fun for awhile, but I would lose interest pretty fast and move on to the next thing. Instead, it's turned out to be a lot of fun and I've met and heard from a lot of interesting people from all over the place. Thanks so much to all of you who have been visiting and those of you who provide feedback. I don't know much about the blues, but what I do know, I will do my best to share it with all of you as long as I can.
I thought about doing some kind of big, special post to honor the occasion, but instead I just opted to share a few more of my favorite things about the Blues. This week, I will share some of my favorite songs from over the years. A favorite song is defined as follows.....If you're listening to a CD or your iPod and a song comes on that you always listen to from start to finish....you never forward to the next song or cut it off while it's playing....that would be a favorite song. These are a few that I always hear from beginning to end.
One of the first blues bands that I really enjoyed was The Fabulous Thunderbirds. I went to see them with a friend of mine in Jackson, MS in early 1987, right after I finished college. They were touring behind their big hit "Tough Enuff," but I had actually heard them before their big break-out on their album, T-Bird Rhythm. "My Babe" was one of my favorite tracks on that album, but it was loaded with some great tunes. I thought Jimmie Vaughan was the coolest cat around, but his solos on record was short and sweet. When he played live, he really stretched out. When he left the T-Birds in the late 80's/early 90's, citing musical differences, I sort of tuned them out for awhile, but in recent years, I have rediscovered them. With their latest release, On The Verge, they moved more toward the soul/blues bag, which is a style that longtime front man Kim Wilson really sinks his teeth into. They now have two great guitarists in Mike Keller and Johnny Moeller, too, so they're still a fun band to hear.
Now, I've been listening to music for a long time, and I have to say that I still pause when I hear Son Seals' "Your Love Is Like A Cancer." I'm not sure how you define this song. In a way, it's a love song....Seals has got it for this girl and got it bad...so bad that he compares her love to a cancer, eating away the very essence of his life. I have to admit that if I were trying to let somebody know how I felt about them, I would have probably chosen a different simile to express my thoughts. More than likely you would have, too, but not Son Seals. If you've ever heard him, you know that he was no shrinking violet. He was all grit, muscle, and passion....right up there in your face. This track is the same way and, sure, it makes me squirm whenever I first hear it, but I can't stop listening. The best thing of all is that it's just one of several great tracks on Seals' first album for Alligator, The Son Seals Blues Band, which is one of his best. You can hear another one, the gritty "Mother-In-Law Blues," immediately following on this clip.
I first heard Larry McCray in the early 90's, when he released Ambition, an album he recorded in a friend's basement in Detroit at night while he worked at General Motors during the day. Ambition set the blues world on it's ear upon release and McCray followed it up with the powerful Delta Hurricane, from which this track, "Last Four Nickels," was first heard. Actually, Son Seals recorded it a little earlier and later recorded McCray's "After Awhile," which also appeared on Delta Hurricane (both songs were written by Dave Steen). McCray really made "Last Four Nickels" his own though, in my opinion, and it's still one that he plays on a regular basis. It's a really high-energy tune that will get your blood pumping when McCray tears into one of his string-shredding solos.
Corey Harris was a big change from the usual Alligator Records recording artists, who veered sharply toward electric blues. Harris was more of a pre-war, unplugged throwback.....one who took old songs and updated them without changing them, so he didn't come off as an interpreter or imitator. There were numerous acoustic blues musicians who surfaced around the time Harris did in the mid 90's, but he was one of the best at playing this brand of blues. When he released Vu-Du Menz with New Orleans piano man Henry Butler, Harris was starting to move from the pre-war blues into more of a funk, world-based style of blues, and this was basically his last stop in that genre. Butler's incredible work on the keys really complemented Harris well and one of the best was their splendid version of Tampa Red's "If You Let A Man Kick You Once." The whole album is a treat, but this is my favorite track.
Let's end today's post with one of my all-time favorite instrumentals. Hound Dog Taylor didn't play pretty, but he could blow your doors off with that roaring slide guitar. Sonny Landreth is one of the finest slide guitarist currently practicing and this incredible cover of Taylor's own "Taylor's Rock" should serve as proof positive of his status. Taylor's original is a model of chaotic mayhem that deserves to be heard in and of itself, but Landreth's version, from Alligator's star-studded tribute album to Taylor, is sheer slide guitar nirvana. This is just the tip of the iceberg with Landreth's talents. Any of his recordings are worth a listen, but every self-respecting blues fan needs at least one Hound Dog Taylor CD in their collection, too.
That's all for today. Thanks for your support and I'm looking forward to the next 200 posts.
I actually read about Skip James before I heard him. I was reading Peter Guralnick’s book, Feel Like Going Home, which devotes a chapter to the Mississippi blues man. Let’s face it; if Peter Guralnick writes
about any musician, if you’re a music fan at all, you are going to want to find out more about his subject. The
best thing about Guralnick’s writing is that he shows his subjects as they are
or were, warts and all, and allows the reader to make his own determination
about them. His chapter on James was a
classic example of this, so I was eager to hear his music.
Finding Skip James recordings was quite a challenge in the
late 80’s, so it took me a while to track them down. The first recording I was able to find was
from his 60’s “rediscovery,” the Vanguard recording, Today! Upon listening, I was
amazed because, quite honestly, I had never heard anything like him. James sang in a haunting, almost eerie
falsetto, and his guitar work was unique as well.....delicate finger-picking
coupled with heavy, hypnotic bass lines, which gave it a deep, resonant sound. The Vanguard recording was almost crystal
clear, too, so it really stood out.
James also played piano (his first instrument) on several tracks, though
it was less compelling than his guitar….sort of scattershot, sometimes chaotic,
at times.
Skip James was born Nehemiah Curtis James on June 9, 1902,
in Yazoo City, Mississippi, about 45 minutes northeast of Jackson, but was
raised near Bentonia, about fifteen
miles south of Yazoo City. His mother
worked as a cook and nanny for some wealthy landowners, and his father was a
bootlegger-turned-preacher who left the family when James was around five. Due to his circumstances, with his mother
working for an influential family, his upbringing was probably a little better
than most of his peers at the time and he had an opportunity to get a better
education than many.
When James was ten, his mother bought him his first guitar,
for $2.50. He was able to hear several
local musicians in the Bentonia area, including Henry Stuckey, Rich Griffith,
and the Sims brothers, Charlie and Jesse.
James reportedly taught himself to play guitar and piano, but Stuckey
reportedly taught him how to play some songs, including “Drunken Spree,” a
popular tune at the time. Stuckey had
served in France during World War I, and had encountered some black Bahamian
soldiers playing guitar with an odd tuning, which he learned and brought back
to Bentonia with him, teaching the style to James and others in the area. That style came to be known as the “Bentonia School” of Delta Blues. James also took piano lessons from a cousin
in order to play the organ in church.
A young Skip James
In the 1920’s, James left Bentonia and lived and worked at a
road construction camp near Ruleville, MS and worked in various locations in
the Mississippi Delta with road- and levee-building crews. During this time, he wrote one of his
earliest songs, “Illinois Blues,” about his experiences as a laborer. While working in Arkansas, he met a piano player, Will
Crabtree, who was an influence on his style.
James eventually settled In Memphis, where he worked as a piano player
in a brothel until around 1924, when he moved back to Bentonia, likely due to
the passage of Prohibition.
James stayed in Bentonia for six years, sharecropping and bootlegging whiskey, (he also attended a theological seminary in Yazoo City during
this time). He started playing his
guitar more and began performing with Stuckey at dances and fish fries in
Bentonia, Sidon, Yazoo City, and Jackson, where he attracted the attention of
H.C. Spier, who owned a music and mercantile store in Jackson, but doubled as a
talent scout for Paramount Records. In
February, 1931, James traveled to Grafton, Wisconsin and recorded 26 tracks at
the Paramount studios (18 of which were released), some of his own originals
and a few spirituals.
During the Paramount session, James recorded several future
classic songs, such as “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” (as vivid a picture of the Great Depression as there possibly can be), “I’m So Glad,” “Devil
Got My Woman,” “Special Rider Blues,” and “22-20 Blues.” He had been known as “Skippy” up until these
recordings (because of his habit of “skipping” from town to town), but
Paramount mistakenly labeled him as “Skip” on his records, so the new name
stuck.
These are some of the finest pre-war blues recordings. James’ falsetto vocals would make the hair
stand up on the back of your neck on these early recordings. Robert Johnson, in particular, was influenced
by these tracks. He later reworked
“22-20 Blues” into his own “32-20 Blues,” and “Devil Got My Woman” inspired his
classic “Hellhound On My Trail.”
Very few copies of James' recordings exist today and the ones
that do are typical of surviving Paramount recordings…..very bad sound due to
inferior production materials. Paramount
was a division of a furniture company and sold records only so people who
bought their phonographs would have something to play on them, so they pressed
their records on cheap shellac and sold them at low prices
Unfortunately, James’ records did not sell very well, due in
part to the Depression, but also probably due to their dark and moody subject
matter. In addition, Paramount only paid
James $40 plus the train ticket for his efforts (most labels paid $20 or so per
side), so James declined further recording opportunities and, after a reunion
with his father, who had become a minister, he moved to Texas and began
attending seminary classes, and he also formed a gospel singing group to back his father’s
sermons.
Over the next ten years, James became an ordained Methodist
minister (in 1932) and an ordained Baptist minister (in 1942), though he never
led his own church. He remained with his
father until he returned to Bentonia in the mid 50’s, following his mother’s
death. He remained in that area for the
rest of the decade in obscurity, driving a tractor, cutting timber, and
supervising plantation workers, only play music occasionally during that time.
Though Skip James himself was below the radar, his
recordings were most definitely not.
During the blues revival of the early 60’s, those Paramount sides
resurfaced and were held in high regard by blues scholars and enthusiasts. Three such people, musicians John Fahey, Bill
Barth, and Harry Vestine (later of Canned Heat) began searching for James in
1964 and found him in a Tunica, Mississippi hospital, where they tried to
persuade him to appear at that year’s Newport Folk Festival.
Skip James at Newport, 1964 (photo by Lawrence Shustack)
James was skeptical, understandably, of getting back into
the “music racket,” as he called it, but he finally agreed to play at Newport
in July. While he was a bit rusty on guitar,
his amazing voice was as solid as ever and he set the place on fire during his fifteen minute set, and was called back for a later performance that was equally electrifying.
While there, he bonded with another recent
“rediscovery,” Mississippi John Hurt, whose gentle brand of blues was the
complete antithesis of James’ dark work.
Despite their musical differences, the two toured together frequently for awhile.
Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James at Newport, 1964 (photo by Dick Waterman)
However, this may have worked against James' comeback, in that his management only had him opening for Hurt, which earned him little money and probably delayed his opportunity to get a recording contract. Had he recorded an album immediately after that Newport appearance, his fortunes might have been much greater. Eventually, he hired Dick Waterman, who took many of these great Newport pictures, as his manager, but the opportunity had been squandered for bigger success, and when James appeared at the next Newport festival, the buzz had disappeared and he was just one of the crowd looking for a record deal.
James eventually recorded several albums during this period, a
pair of wonderful releases on Vanguard that mixed remakes of his old songs with
stunning new material, plus equally fine albums on labels like Takoma and
Melodeon. Eric Clapton recorded a rock
version of James’ “I’m So Glad,” with the band Cream, which enabled James to
enjoy some royalties as composer (though he reportedly hated the Clapton
version). He was also able to tour overseas, appearing at the American Folk Blues Festival in Germany in 1967,
Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last very long. When Fahey, Barth, and Vestine had found him
in that Tunica hospital, he was in the beginning stages of a battle with
cancer, which ultimately claimed his life in October of 1969, at the age of 67,
after he had relocated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is buried in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania,
next to his wife. James seemed to realize his time was short, and indicated so in one of his newer songs, "Sick Bed Blues," which contains the devastating line, "He may get better, but he won't get well no more."
Skip James was an interesting character, to say the
least. His entire life was a struggle
between the church and the blues…..he moved back and forth between the two,
sometimes straddling the fence. As a
youth, he reportedly worked as a pimp while in Arkansas and Memphis. He also claimed to have killed a man during
his rambling days in the early 20’s.
Yet, he also spent many years traveling, preaching, and leading his
Dallas Texas Jubilee Singers.
An intensely proud man, he held his own work in high esteem, but
often disdained the work of other blues artists, and often refused to share musical ideas with others.
He was suspicious of others, very introverted, and difficult to even get
along with, at times even seeming to view his own adoring fans with contempt if
they tried to get too close to him. Waterman told of one such incident in his book, Between Midnight and Day:
Skip, having more than his share of vanity, reveled when a fan rained compliments upon him. He would listen with great interest, nodding his head at particularly lavish offerings. But he could be curt when his privacy was invaded. One night at a club a young man walked into a small dressing room uninvited and committed a cardinal sin against any professional musician: he took Skip's guitar out of its case and began to play one of Skip's songs. The young man played with little talent but great enthusiasm. At the end of the song, he smiled at Skip, "Hey, man, do I have you down or do I have you down?" Skip took the guitar from him and put it back in the case. Then he turned and spoke without emotion, "Skip has come and gone from places that you will never get to."
Despite all of these issues, he has been cited by many blues
and rock artists as an influence. In addition to Cream, Deep
Purple also covered “I’m So Glad.” As we
noted a few months back, Canned Heat singer/harmonica player Alan Wilson cited
James as his biggest influence as a vocalist. James' recordings, pre-war and post-war, have been issued and reissued multiple times. In the movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou?,
viewers got to see blues man Chris Thomas King perform James’ “Hard Time
Killing Floor Blues” (even though he was portraying Crystal Springs blues man Tommy Johnson), and the 1931 version
of “Devil Got My Woman” was featured in the movie, Ghost World.
Though James (and contemporary Jack Owens, who died in 1997) were seen as the
only two purveyors of the “Bentonia School” of Delta Blues for many years, the tradition does lives
on today with Bentonia resident Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who records for Broke & Hungry Records, and sings many James favorites while adding his own new material to
the tradition as well.
Recommended Listening
The Complete Early Recordings of Skip James (Yazoo Records): This is where I first heard these wonderful recordings, but they are available from other labels. Wherever you pick these recordings up, the sound quality is about the same, which can make for a difficult listening experience. Some tracks sound better than others, but on nearly all of them, you get a real feel for the emotion and depth of James' performances. It's just an amazing performance that overcomes the shoddy production values from Paramount. However, if you're new to Skip James and want to experience his music, the best move may be to listen to his 60's recordings first, then back up to the original source material.
Blues From The Delta (Vanguard): Both of James' original Vanguard releases (Today! and Devil Got My Woman) are worth having. The sound on them is pristine and James had lost very little off his fast ball, despite going over thirty years between recordings. This set collects the best tunes from both of the earlier releases, plus a few bonus tracks. James recreated many of his 1931 recordings here and added a few new songs that were equally compelling (particularly the songs about his medical adventures). This is where I would start listening to Skip James, but I would definitely go back to the Paramount recordings from here.
I've always enjoyed doing the Old, New, Borrowed, Blue posts because they're a great way to get a wide variety of blues out there that may be new to some visitors. If you're not familiar with the process, here's how it works.......we will look at a blues artist who dates back to either the beginnings or the formative years of the blues (Something Old), a relative newcomer to the genre who's putting a new spin on the blues (Something New), either a blues artist doing a cover of a rock or country song, or vice versa (Something Borrowed), and finally, someone who is the epitome of the blues....a man or woman whose picture you might see next to the word in the dictionary (or on Wikipedia). As the number indicates, we've done this ten times already here at Friday Blues Fix, and I also did this topic a number of times when FBF was a weekly email to my co-workers.
Floyd Jones (photo by Pete Lowry)
For Something Old, let's take a look at one of the early Chicago blues men, Floyd Jones. Jones was born in Arkansas, but was raised in the Mississippi Delta, where he learned to play guitar (supposedly a gift from Howlin' Wolf). He migrated to Chicago in the mid 40's, where he picked up the electric guitar and began playing for tips on Maxwell Street with his cousin, Moody Jones, Baby Face Nelson, Johnny Young, Little Walter, and Snooky Pryor, and also on the Chicago club scene. He recorded in the late 40's, either with or backing Pryor, Sunnyland Slim, and his cousin, Moody, for several labels....J.O.B., Chess, Vee-Jay.
Most of Jones' original compositions were dark and foreboding. They often were about events that were occurring at the time, such as "Stockyard Blues" or "Hard Times." Some of his songs have become blues standards, such as "Dark Road," one of the darkest of the blues songs and one you've rarely heard other artists cover. Jones' laconic delivery of the tune was hard to top. He also was the original composer of "On The Road Again," which later inspired the hit by Canned Heat. Jones remained active on the Chicago blues scene, although he eventually moved from guitar to bass, until his death in 1989. Though he didn't get to record very much after his intial run in the late 40's/early 50's, he was part of Earwig Records' standout release, Old Friends, in 1979....appearing with Sunnyland Slim, Honeyboy Edwards, Kansas City Red, and Big Walter Horton.
Robert Randolph (photo by Derek Brad)
For Something New, we go to Robert Randolph and the Family Band and the tune, "Amped Up," from their latest CD, Lickety Split, on Blue Note Records. I keep saying that I need to do a post on Sacred Steel, and I plan to do one in the near future. Randolph got his start playing drums in church and eventually graduating to steel guitar in his early teens. Unlike many of his fellow steel guitarists, Randolph began listening to other music, like funk, soul, jazz, and blues. He began incorporating those sounds into his own music and soon began working on the jam band circuit with groups like The Derek Trucks Band, and his live shows with the Family Band became the stuff of legend and led to an appearance on the wonderful instrumental gospel/blues album, The Word, in 2001.
Randolph has recorded several albums over the past decade....a couple of live discs and four studio discs. Until their most recent release, Randolph and the band had difficulty capturing the joy and manic energy of their live shows, but with Lickety Split, that's no longer an issue. It's a wall-to-wall thrill and features the band with guitar legend Carlos Santana on two tracks and the New Orleans rising star, Trombone Shorty, appears on another.
For Something Borrowed, how about Buddy Guy covering Eric Clapton? Two of Clapton's big influences were Guy and Albert King. On the original version of "Strange Brew," from Cream's album, Disraeli Gears, Clapton did his best Albert King impression on the solo. Some thirty years later, the House of Blues record label issued a Clapton album (Blues Power: Songs of Eric Clapton) as part of their "This Ain't No Tribute" tribute series that found blues artists covering classic rock & roll artists (the others in the series were the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, and Led Zeppelin). Of course, some of these tributes worked better than others...the Stones and Clapton sets were both pretty good throughout and the Joplin and Dylan sets were sort of hit-and-miss. I have to admit when I looked at the track list, I was probably the least excited about this song, but Buddy Guy actually does a great job with the tune....his tight, stinging lead guitar on this track is one of the highlights of the album.....a really nice effort.
Son Seals (photo by Kirk West)
For Something Blue, we look to the late, great Frank "Son" Seals. The first song I heard from Seals was "Goin' Home (Where Women Got Meat On Their Bones)," which was intriguing enough to encourage me to listen to more. From there, I bought the album, Bad Axe, which included "Goin' Home," and this unbelievably intense opening track from the disc, "Don't Pick Me For Your Fool." From that point, I was hooked and ended up grabbing up all of Seals' recordings in one format or another.
Seals' guitar sounds like it's strung with barbed wire and his throat-shredding vocals are just as engaging. Best of all is his songwriting, which is the blues at it's best. Face it.....anybody who could come up with a song called "Your Love Is Like a Cancer" certainly deserves to be heard. Just check out this track and be amazed at the raw power behind Son Seals.
During the summer, I decided to plug a few gaps in my Otis Rush collection. Many moons ago, when all my music was on cassette, I pretty much had everything by Rush that was available in that format. Unfortunately, there were several Rush albums only available on CD that I missed and never went back and repurchased after changing to the CD format.
As I reported a few weeks ago, I looked into possibly writing a biography of Rush during the summer, but after talking to a few people, I decided to shelve that project for the time being. I did, however, decide to go ahead and take in some of his music during the summer months, so with Amazon Birthday Gift Cards in hand, I filled in the gaps in my Otis Rush catalog. Most of the gaps consisted of his live recordings. Some of them, I had not heard, but had not heard good things about them. Some of the others had just fallen through the cracks over the years.
Today, we'll be taking a brief look at the live recordings of Otis Rush on CD and DVD. While in the studio, he was sometimes hampered by lack of quality material, or uninspired backing musicians, or maybe he wasn't at the top of his game, this was not usually a concern with his live performances, as is the case on most of these sets.
If I were starting a collection of Rush's live albums, one of the first ones I would get is his mid 70's release on Delmark Records, So Many Roads: Live In Concert. This set was recorded in Japan in 1975 in front of thousands of adoring fans. It also features fellow Windy City legend Jimmy Johnson on second guitar. Rush plays a lot of his familiar tunes here ("Crosscut Saw," "I Can't Quit You Baby," All Your Love (I Miss Loving)," "So Many Roads," etc....), and covers a few tunes originally done by inspirations (Jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell's "Chitlins Con Carne," for one). He really gives a powerful performance, both vocally and on guitar and the band gives solid support as well. This is a great place to get started.
Actually, any of Rush's 70's live recordings, all done in about a two year span, are worth having. Another of my favorites is the early 1976 recording that was done in Chicago as part of a radio broadcast. All Your Love I Miss Loving: Live at the Wise Fool's Pub Chicago (also on Delmark), features Rush with his working band at the time (a rarity for the most part on many of his live recordings) at a club in Chicago that he played on a regular basis, obviously in front of many familiar faces, so you know he was on his game for this set. The sound is great, and you have the genuine feeling that you're in the club listening. Many of the songs are part of his regular set list, but there is one unique track that I haven't heard Rush do anywhere else, a fantastic cover of Robert Nighthawk's "Sweet Little Angel."
Live In Europe was recorded during a 1977 appearance in France, again with his working band. This is part of Evidence Records' reissue series of Black & Blue Records releases and Rush is in good form once again here, even channeling T-Bone Walker on "Society Woman/Love Is Just A Gamble." For some reason, despite several good studio recordings done during the early to mid 70's, both in the U.S. and overseas, Rush's career never really did catch fire and frustrated, he took a lengthy absence from the music scene that lasted several years.
In the late 80's, Blind Pig Records released Tops, which was recorded during Rush's appearance at the 1985 San Francisco Blues Festival, returning from his hiatus from the music scene by touring the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Backed by West Coast guitarist Bobby Murray and his band (which included future Robert Cray keyboardist Jimmy Pugh), Rush sounds like he'd never been away on these tunes, and his return was hailed by fans and peers, like Carlos Santana, Los Lobos, and Jeff Beck, who cited Rush as one of his early influences. During this same time, he appeared at Montreux and was joined by Eric Clapton, Luther Allison, and Robert Cray, and seemed poised to get his career back on track.
That Montreux appearance was later issued as part of Eagle Rock's excellent Live At Montreux series of CDs and DVDs. Billed as Otis Rush & Friends Live at Montreux 1986, it teams Rush with Clapton and Allison, though the lion's share of the set is Rush backed by Professor Eddie Lusk's tight ensemble. Clapton comes out to play on about half the tracks, including "Crosscut Saw," "Double Trouble," and "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)," and Allison joins them both on the closer, "Every Day I Have The Blues." The DVD actually features a few more tracks of just Rush and the band, and it's one of the few opportunities fans will have to see Rush perform live, and to be honest, even though I have the CD and DVD, I usually plug in the DVD as first option because there's more songs.
A lesser set from the same period Blues Interaction: Live In Japan 1986, was released on Sequel Records in 1994. Rush appears with a local Japanese band, Break Down, on this set and while they make a game effort, they seem to be in a little over their heads on several of these tracks. Rush does have some nice moments on "Double Trouble," the instrumental, "Tops," that kicks off the performance, "All Your Love," and a spirited version of "Gambler's Blues" that closes the performance. He also does James Brown's "Please Please Please," Ben E. King's "Stand By Me," and Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor." Like most Otis Rush performances, there's plenty of good work here, but pick this one up later on, like I did.
One to avoid would be Live and Awesome, on Genes Records. While it is live, it's most definitely not awesome. Released in 1996, it was recorded a couple of years earlier, when Rush was not in good health. To be honest, I've only listened to about half of it. Another one that is best left alone is a recording that's floated around for many years under one title or another for various labels that supposedly offers Rush and Little Walter at one of the Chicago Blues Festivals. This one is similar to the Buddy Guy/Junior Wells set that has also seen many different titles and covers over the years, but Rush and Little Walter don't actually perform together. While Rush's performances are pretty good, the sound is pretty bad, like it was recorded in front of the stage with a tape recorder or something. Really not worth the time and money.
There is one last live set available, done in 1999 for Blues Express, and released as a CD and DVD. Live.....And in Concert From San Francisco was recorded on a sound stage in San Francisco that was set up to resemble a juke joint. Rush puts on a great performance. It appears that every effort was made to make Rush as comfortable as possible, surrounding him with a four-piece horn section and a tight rhythm section. He really stretches out on several songs, pretty much the standard fare of his sets, with a few rarities, like the instrumental, "717," and his old standard, "I Can't Quit You Baby." Bobby Murray joins him on the closer, "Got My Mojo Working."
The DVD of this performance is entitled Live Part 1, and it's required viewing for any Otis Rush fan. This was recorded just a few years before Rush had his stroke, which rendered him unable to play. It's a shame because judging by this performance, there was still plenty left in the tank. Sadly, it was not meant to be. Rush remains one of the giants of the post-war Chicago blues, but blues fans are left to wonder how much bigger he could have actually been had he been able to capitalize on a few missed opportunities.
.jpg)
.jpg)
