Blue Monday: Otis & Luther @ Chicago Blues Festival, '95

For tonight's Blue Monday installments, we'll be revisiting the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival. Through the years, across Grant Park's 3 stages, the Chicago Blues Festival has come to represent the pinnacle of blues festivals, featuring the very best the idiom has got to offer. For 3 days in June 1995, there was just something in the air and the festival would produce at least 3 sets that have become the stuff of legend, from Luther Allison, Otis Rush, and Brownie McGhee. We would lose Brownie to stomach cancer the following February...and as we would soon find out, Luther wouldn't be around much longer either.

Blazing through Saturday evening's performances at the Petrillo Band Shell were sets by Eddie C. Campbell, followed by Allison. Otis Rush headlined that night, delivering a blistering performance, climaxed by Luther and Campbell sitting in with Otis for the Gambler's Blues>Sweet Little Angel Medley.

If this recording is any indication, then Otis Rush could not have felt more at home on that stage than he did, rendering a near-perfect dose of West Side Chicago blues.



Otis Rush
Chicago Blues Festival
Grant Park
Chicago, IL
June 3, 1995

Sbd @320

01. Everything's Going To Be Alright
02. Big Legged Woman
03. Otis Rush Introduction - Crosscut Saw
04. Right Place, Wrong Time
05. Somebody Have Mercy
06. Homework
07. 1 It's My Own Fault
08. All Your Love
09. Tore Up
10. A Fool For You
11. Tell Me The Reason
12. I Don´t What Love Is>Gambler's Blues>Sweet Little Angel*

*with Luther Allison & Eddie C. Campbell


Link



Few people had more to prove than Luther Allison did that night. Allison had been away from Chicago for years, having emigrated to Paris in the early 1980's. Like Memphis Slim (who headlined the following night's performances...), Luther felt he was getting more respect in Europe than he was in a United States that was once again leaving the blues behind...in favor of soul music and pop dreck.

Luther had famously been reintroduced to his domestic public, and his career launched to heights that had always eluded him, when he signed to Alligator in 1994. Soul Fixin Man and its follow-up, Blue Streak were revelations and made Luther an overnight star...more than 35 years after his career began.

Luther was very much aware of how important his set at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival was to his reestablishment and to making his presence known. When Luther took the stage that Saturday evening, he hadn't seen a a bed in two nights. He'd played a festival in Nantes, France, before grabbing a Paris to Chicago flight to be on time for his set. Luther was a bluesman renowned for high energy sets and for always delivering the goods. Drawing heavily on material from his recently-released Blue Streak, Luther pulled off a career high point that night, with ripping renditions of Cherry Red Wine, Bad Love, a wild Give Me Back My Wig and a soaring take on Tampa Red's It Hurts Me Too.

When Alligator Records released Luther's set as the first disc of Live In Chicago, they tacked on the Gambler's Blues>Sweet Little Angel medley from Otis Rush's set. The second disc features material from a further pair of Allison concerts, a November, '95 gig at Buddy Guy's Legends and a May 1997 outing from Lincoln Nebraska's Zoo Bar.

The 1999 release would prove to be the first (and my opinion best) of a spate of posthumous live Allison releases, a double-disc blast of a legend at the top of his game.




Luther Allison
Live in Chicago
Alligator, 1999

Disc 1

1-intro
2-Soul Fixin Man
3-Cherry Red Wine
4-Move from the Hood
5-Bad Love
6-Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
7-Big City
8-Give Me back My Wig
9-It Hurts Me Too
10-Gambler's Blues>Sweet Little Angel

Disc 2

1-Party Time
2-All the King's Horses
3-What Have I Done Wrong?
4-Walking Papers
5-Think With Your Heart
6-What's Goin On In My Home?
7-Will it Ever Change?
8-You're Gonna Make Me Cry
9-Everything's Gonna Be Alright


Link


AND...for those of you who would like to explore just one more from the 1995 Chicago Blues festival, I would invite you to check out Mitch Lopate's recent post over at Voodoo Wagon...

Brownie McGhee, June 4, 1995


Peace, Mudcatz

Personally Essential: Allison's Sweet Home Chicago

Until just a few years ago, a computer wasn't anything more to me than a glorified word processor. I never even saw the internet before probably '03. Let's just say I might as well have been living in a cave. To be an obsessional blues fan prior to the Net meant you got your blues history through books and liner notes. You zoomed in on the artists and albums you kept hearing about (or came across on some compilation somewhere), broke out your mail-order catalog and hoped your choices would live up to their hype. Sometimes you got lucky; sometimes you got boned.

Luther Allison has always delivered the goods for me, even through those years when I knew next to nothing of the man. I was blessed, back in the mid-1980's, to have seen Luther twice at club venues in Germany. It was an electrifying experience both times, explosive, riveting, and largely formative for me, a young white kid from Maine just getting into the blues. Imagine my thrill, years later, when a bitter, grizzled old convict handed me a copy of Blue Streak. At that time, I hadn't even realized Luther had recorded, much less that he'd actually been around for a whole lot of years.

I've never said I wasn't a dumb-ass.

All my Luther Allison purchases back then were blind-shots because there was so little information readily available about the man. One of the first to find its way to me was a "Charly Blues Masterworks" edition of Sweet Home Chicago. Through the years that followed, it had remained a bit of a mystery to me. The liner notes, of which I've always been a compulsive reader, were a mixed blessing. Its author, John Collis, did a fine job of summarizing the differences between the South and West Side schools of Chicago blues and for providing the standard synopsis of Luther's biography.

As for telling me what I was listening to, where it was recorded, and who was playing, Charly failed miserably. Two and a half pages of liner notes and all that was provided, almost as an afterthought, was:

"Luther Allison: v/g
Rest Unknown
Recorded Chicago, ca. 1976"

I suppose we should be relieved that Charly at least correctly identified Luther as the vocalist and guitarist. The rest is shit. Recorded in Chicago, Gracie? During his rave-up Sweet Home Chicago Allison actually identifies Peoria as his location. As for the players? Luther calls out two by name during this set, a "Sidney" (who I'd always assumed was the sax player) and "Bernard," which had me immediately wondering if Luther had had his son on stage--and playing--for this one. But that just didn't make sense. 1976!?! Bernard would have been 11 years old at most. What I wasn't so easy to dismiss is the paternal pride in Luther's voice as they wrap up Willie Cobb's You Don't Love Me, "...Let's hear it for Bernard, ladies and gentlemen. Shit, yes!"

There's nothing like a sackful of inconsistencies to keep a man wondering for years.

So let's set the record straight.

Sweet Home Chicago was recorded as part of a two-night run, April 18-19, 1979 at a club called The Other Side in Peoria Heights, IL. Admittedly, Peoria isn't far from Chicago...but if you're going to be presenting documentary citations, get your fact right! Two albums were released from these shows, Rumble Records' Gonna Be a Live One in Here Tonight! and Power Wire Blues (part 2), both issued that same year. Neither album went anywhere.

Gonna Be a Live One... would see re-release four years later on the Red Lightnin' label as South Side Safari. Two years after that, in 1985, Charly re-packaged and released Power Wire Blues as Sweet Home Chicago.

"Sidney" turned out to be keyboardist Sid Windfield. The feller blowing that mean alto sax was Mike Allen. Kenny Bordeau played bass on these gigs, with Kenny Arnold on the drums.

Turns out that not only did 13 year-old Bernard Allison play on two of the tunes from this disc, it was actually his first time onstage. Bernard remembers it this way: “When we moved to Peoria, Dad came home preparing to do his live album in Peoria, I hooked up the amplifier and guitar in the basement and started playing his first record, Love Me Mama, note for note. He freaked out and said tonight you’re gonna record with me. That was my first recording. I played “You Don’t Love Me No More” and “Sweet Home Chicago.”

We've logged some long miles together, this album and I. It's traveled with me from the days when the living was bad and the places truly dark. Curious though its inclusion may seem, Sweet Home Chicago became a sentimental favorite on impact and has never been far from my side. I consider it a "curious inclusion" because we'll not find it on a single Top 20 list. Ever. It is a bastard son recording for bastard sons. In the context of Luther's own canon, it will always (& admittedly justifiably) be overshadowed by Allison's Alligator releases, as well as his pre-Motown work. Still, after all these "qualifications" are mentioned, I just can't consider my blues collection complete without it.

With just six songs, most of them covers of blues standards like Dust My Broom and Don Nix's Goin' Down, and weighing in at just over 43 minutes, this disc will always seem like an outrider to me. It just shouldn't be as solid a Luther Allison outing as it is, but a smoker it remains. Luther's vocals throughout are as good as they ever got, brimming with soul and humor. As for those six strings? Well, you didn't put a guitar in Luther Allison's hands without expecting some great stuff to come flying back at you. He doesn't even begin to disappoint here. This is a "Quick-Fix" dose of Luther. In case of emergency, break glass.


Luther Allison
Sweet Home Chicago
(Blues Masterworks, Vol. 37)
Charly, 1996

1. Dust My Broom
2. I Got Worries
3. You Don't Love Me
4. Goin' Down
5. I'm Gonna Leave You Alone
6. Sweet Home Chicago


Lnk



...And just to finally, rightly, "reassemble" these recordings, 1983's South Side Safari presents 7 more cuts that are just a joy to the last. Among their highlights are Movin On Up, which was one of Luther's very first recordings when he cut it as "Gotta Move On Up" for Delmark's pivotal 1968 "Sweet Home Chicago" compilation (which also included material by Magic Sam, Louis Myers, and Big Mojo Elem.) Cat Blues is the real fun for this album, though, giving Luther the opportunity to poke fun at Peoria's Caterpillar factory, where Allison himself had worked at one time, as were a great many in his audience those nights. During this song we also witness one of the earlier occasions when Luther has a conversation with his guitar, a "gimmick" that would become a standard through the balance of his career.


Luther Allison
South Side Safari
Red Lightnin, 1983



1. Strokes
2. You're Gonna Need Me
3. You Upset Me Babe
4. Movin On Up
5. The Thrill Is Gone
6. Cat Blues
7. Messin With The Kid


Link


Peace, Mudcatz

TDIH: Luther @ North Sea Jazz '96

I'm putting this one up in salute to the now-departed Floppy Boot Stomp. As many of you know, this great blog got shut down yesterday, the latest of a string of music blogs that have fallen under the hammer. While I am confident that Silent Way, Mitch, Jobe and the others will be back, it's always disheartening to watch another site go down.

Love us or hate us, and our reasons for blogging and doing what we do are as varied as the blogs themselves, these blogs are a lot of work. They are a labor of love...and, yes, the reality is that we and all that work can be gone in an instant. It really is only a matter of time before the axe falls here. Sadly, that's just how it is.

So thanks, Floppy Boot, for all the work you've done there and all the joy you've helped spread around.

I'm pretty sure I got this *MINT* Luther Allison set over at Floppy Boot a while back--and I hope I did leave a thanks behind. It's been worth it a few times over.

For those who aren't familiar with the term, "TDIH" stands for "This Date in History"... and as good fortune has it, today's TDIH provides some nice symmetry to the BB King set I just put up a few hours back, both played on a July 13th at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland, 11 years apart.

Luther Allison, always one of my favorite musicians, was riding the crest of his comeback run in the summer of '96, when he appeared at North Sea Jazz. And he delivers the goods in fine style. For a performer renowned for his 3-hour shows, this seems a short set, clocking in at just over 51 minutes. But don't you worry none. Luther made every second count in this one...

Luther Allison
North Sea Jazz Festival
Den Haag, Netherlands
July 13, 1996

(Sbd @ 320/kps)


1. Move From the 'Hood
2. You Don't Know
3. Cherry Red Wine
4. Walking Papers
5. Big City
6. Serious
7. You Are So Beautiful
8. Soul Fixin' Man

Link


Thanks, Floppy Boot Stomp!!

Peace, Mudcatz