Collins: Doubling Down

HighPing, Duncan, this one's for you...

Your comments had me getting on a Collins kick this last day or so--for that alone, I owe ya some thanks. I been going blind researching some of the posts that are coming right up and a heaping dose of Albert has always been one of the best reasons around to say "screw it," turn the volume up a notch or three, and get to loving life.

I don't know how these selections will do ya, most of the live Collins I've got here has been fairly well circulated and you may well have bumped into them before... They're definitely a pair to be had...

First up is some vintage Albert, circa 1969, treating the hippies of the Fillmore West to a roaring set, mixing Collins originals like Thaw Out and Backstroke with standards such as a grooving Mustang Sally and BB's How Blue Can You Get? I've seen several reviews whining about the sound quality of this performance...and I disagree. This show was a bootleg recording that, as many do, ended up "officially" released--just not by Collins. The obscure Red Lightnin label first issued this set in 1971, when Collins was still under contract to Imperial. Given its vintage, this
show has a decent sound indeed--and the Iceman's playing is hot.

The Japanese label, Pony Canyon, would be the first to reissue this set on disc, in 1999 under its original title, Alive & Cool. It would be released twice more in just the next 5 years, both on British labels, Catfish in 2000 and Snapper (as Thaw Out at the Fillmore) in 2004.

This is the Catfish issue...


Albert Collins
Live at the Fillmore
Catfish 2000

1. Instrumental
2. How Blue Can You Get?
3. Thaw Out
4. So Tired
5. Funky
6. Deep Freeze
7. Baby, What You Want Me To Do?
8. Mustang Sally
9. Backstroke

Link


Twenty-three years later, Collins had spent more than a decade having his career rejuvenated--and doing some of his best work--on the Alligator label. June of '92 found him at Grant Park's Petrillo Band Shell, headlining the Chicago Blues Festival. Wrapping up a weekend that had seen, among others, Honeyboy Edwards, Hubert Sumlin, Sunnyland Slim and Jimmy Dawkins, Sunday night's performance was a thing of thunderous beauty, made all the more special by the guest appearance of fellow Texas blues legend, Lowell Fulson. Albert backs Fulson for a pair of tunes, including the souful Reconsider Baby. From a ripping Iceman to a strutting Black Cat Bone, a funky Do You Feel It? to his ringing, blistering instrumentals, we are are on the receiving end of a late career blast from a master showman.

This is an FM-sourced boot, broadcast by 91.5 Public Radio in Chicago and includes a brief interview segment with Collins shortly after he leaves the stage. Albert is tickled that the show had been broadcast nationally. He is in great humor, though he expresses some light regret that he was unable to get down into the audience, owing to time constraints for his set. Using a 175-foot cord, Collins was famous for walking through his crowds to the bar, the men's room, or out into the street, playing all the while. It was trademark Collins and Albert explains it this way:

"I like being around people when I play, you know...get close to 'em and feel like you know each other...feel like family..."



Albert Collins
Chicago Blues Festival
Grant Park Chicago IL
June 7, 1992

1. Intro
2. Instrumental
3. Iceman
4. Lights Are On But Nobody's Home
5. Put the Shoe On the Other Foot
6. Black Cat Bone
7. Instrumental
8. Same Old Thing
9. Mr. Collins
10. Things I Used To Do
11. Lowell Fulson intro
12. Do You Feel It
13. Reconsider Baby
14. Instrumental
15. Radio Wrap-up
16. Interview

Link


Peace, Mudcatz

Blue Monday: Freddie @ Cain's Ballroom, '75

Some boots have just had more miles on 'em than others. Freddie King has usually had a fair brace of concert tapes in circulation since before he left us, tragically too soon, in December of '76. King's legacy and impact on both blues and rock is still being assessed even now. When turned loose, the Texas Cannonball was close to an intuitive genius, playing from the guts and flying when the spirit told him to soar.

Unlike many of King's early '70's boots, which have been in tape circulation almost as long, his April, '75 show at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma seems to have bobbed to the surface somewhat more recently. As far as I can tell, it first started popping up in trading circles only about 6 years ago, having been cleaned up and sound adjusted along the way. The end result is a crisp-sounding, high-octaned show that just rips.

Playing the ballroom circuit, as opposed to festival or televised slots, usually meant Freddie had the time and space to stretch out, as he treats us to here, producing a two-disc beast of a show that comes on strong and keeps on swinging.


Freddie King
Cain's Ballroom
Tulsa OK
April 15, 1975


1. Big Legged Woman
2. Hey Baby (Part 1)
3. TV Mama
4. Look On Yonder Wall
5. Woman Across The River
6. San-Ho-Zay
7. Have You Ever Loved A Woman>
8. Rock Me Baby>
9. Have You Ever Loved A Woman
10. Goin' Down //


1. Sweet Home Chicago>Hey Baby (Part 2)>Palace of The King
2. Please Accept My Love
3. Shake Your Booty
4. Mojo Boogie


Link

Peace, Mudcatz

Blue Monday: Collins @ Monterrey, '78

Those of you folks anywhere near the north-eastern U.S. hardly need any reminder of the blizzard that's frolicking about out there. It's been coming down for more than 24 hours now and there ain't a whole lot of point to be poking my head out of the cabin.

It seems more than appropriate to bring on the Iceman...

1978 would prove to be a key year for Collins, the year he would sign with the still-fledgling Alligator Records and not only rejuvenate his lagging career but also vault his career into his most successful period.

That September, Albert took the stage at the Monterrey Jazz Festival and delivered a short, if incendiary set. None of the material Collins covered at Monterrey that afternoon would be among the songs released that year on Ice Pickin'. It is an on-time dose of under-exposed Collins, backed by a tight band that includes the swinging, venerable A.C. Reed.


Albert Collins
Monterrey Jazz Festival
September 16, 1978

sbd @320/kbs

1. Somebody's Got to Go
2. I'm Ready
3. Instrumental/Collins intro
4. Have Mercy
5. Don't Lose Your Cool
6. Do What You Wanna Do
7. The Things I Used To Do
8. Frosty

Link


Peace, Mudcatz

From Christmas, into Sunday

Wrapped up last evening & a long Christmas week dozing off with my lady to Mahalia Jackson's Silent Night album. If I had been aware of Mahalia's Christmas albums before, I'd long since forgotten. Some of the finest holiday gospel I've ever heard. I've got Azzul, over at OnMuddySava to thank for turning me--and us--onto these recordings. His post is here:

Azzul's Mahalia Jackson post

Definitely go over & check it out...

...And when you get back, I invite you to spend a little time at Jackson's rain-soaked, powerhouse set from 1958's Newport Jazz Festival. Sifting through the wreckage of the cabin's holiday week, Sunday's sounding a whole lot like Mahalia at the moment...

It has been said that Mahalia Jackson was the "finest gospel singer this country ever produced." While I believe such statements are all ultimately subjective, I personally find this one hard to dispute. We are given ample and consistent evidence of this throughout Jackson's Newport set, from her moving Evening Prayer opening, through Didn't It Rain, a deeply soulful Keep Your Hands on the Plow, on to her pair of stirring encores, Jesus Met the Woman at the Well and His Eye Is On the Sparrow.

At the time of this performance, after years of well-profiled concert and television performances, Jackson's career was reaching its zenith when she took the stage at Newport. Always singing through chronic and debilitating pain, this woman channeled it all, singing to her God, delivering vocal performances that remain some of the finest gospel has ever produced.



Mahalia Jackson
Live at Newport 1958
Sony 1994

1. Introduction
2. An Evening Prayer
3. A City Called Heaven
4. I'm On My Way
5. It Didn't Cost Very Much
6. Didn't It Rain
7. He's Got the Whole World In His Hands
8. When The Saints Go Marching In
9. I'm Going To Live The Life I Sing About In My Song
10. Keep Your Hand On the Plow
11. The Lord's Prayer
12. Walk Over God's Heaven
13. Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
14. Jesus Met the Woman at the Well
15. His Eye on the Sparrow

Link


Peace, Mudcatz

Merry Christmas!

At the end of a crazy week and just now finding the space to draw a breath, I can only think of how remiss I'd be if I did not thank you folks. Whatever your beliefs, however you observe, I hope this Christmas season has found you & your families warm and safe. May the new year ahead be rich in its blessings for you.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Peace, Mudcatz

Repackaging Johnny

If you're an adult male on this planet with a lady under your roof, you live beneath the shadow of the Honey-Do List. For me, poking about on retired hard drives doesn't appear anywhere on that list. It is just a whole lot more gratifying. Outside the snow's coming down. Inside it's feeling a whole lot more like a private concert in a hot Delta front porch. Just you and Johnny Shines.

I have often found it intriguing that a blues album can assert itself as essential listening and yet remain a comparative obscurity. When faced with a catalog as expansive as Johnny Shines' has become, it's been too easy to glance past Black & Blue's 2002 re-release, Takin' the Blues Back South as part of its Blues Reference series. Personally, the first time I spotted it, in a vendor's stall at North Atlantic Blues festival a few years back, I slid right on by, taking it for a repackaging of released and re-released Shines material. I'd obviously not spent much time reading the liner notes.

To be clear, Takin' the Blues Back South is a repackaging of a Shines album, 1973's Chicago Blues Festival 1972. The original title itself was a bit confusing--and would have proved an infuriating turn were the material it did provide not such a banquet. At first glance, that title implied a live Shines outing, which this album is not. It was an assemblage of tunes Shines cut on a pair of dates in France, (Gan on November 14 and in Bordeaux 3 weeks later). The Gan cuts feature Luther Johnson on second guitar.

Though re-released only a couple years later as Nobody's Fault But Mine, the album remained an obscurity from the outset. Being a French label, what distribution arrangements Black & Blue did have in the 1970's didn't translate well for this album. Imported Shines just didn't compete with Homegrown Johnny and as the decade that gave us punk rock, emasculated singer/songwriters and disco wore on, the blues market was beginning to dry up again. Europe, at least, remained a more receptive environment. Shines was hardly unique in cutting material overseas; bluesmen had been cutting wax in Europe for at least 15 years by the time Johnny sat down for Black & Blue.

What came out of those sessions was an album of old school Delta blues that cut right to the heart of the matter. As guitarists go, Shines was a bit of a rarity himself, a player who was equally-lethal on an acoustic or electric instrument. Back that up with a voice that can rattle your windowpanes and Johnny Shines could be about as potent a package as one could ever hope. As much press as Johnny still gets for his Robert Johnson influences, his vocals always owed more stylistically to Patton and Howlin Wolf. Few bluesman could deliver a more piercing and emotive wail. His was a field holler with a backbeat.

Partial as I tend to be for Shines' electric material--I can think of few pairings more sublime than Shines backed by his old Memphis road-dawg, Big Walter Horton. To this end, sometimes I miss some true gemstones.

Eight years ago, Black & Blue rolled the dice again on this low profile album, retitling it Takin the Blues Back South. For the CD reissue, two previously-unreleased tracks, Blood Ran Like Wine and an alternative take of Mean Black Gobbler.

By whichever title you prefer, this is an entirely-unplugged album of traditionally-played Delta blues and it is exactly a disc that got us buying blues albums in the first place. Were it not for the comparatively pristine sound quality, one could easily imagine these songs being cut in Memphis' Peabody Hotel in the autumn of '29...or in a Dallas hotel room, playing into the corner. I would argue that there are moments sewn throughout this album that are as stirring--as real--as Shines ever managed to record.

Shines' Johnson influences through this album are undeniable. I Believe I'll Make a Change is, of course, a reworking of I Believe I'll Dust My Broom. Immediately into the hypnotic, wonderful Abide My Wish, we're waiting to hear Johnny mention a hellhound on his trail...which he does manage shortly before he closes the tune. When discussing Shines' music, we need to be careful to point out that, while an influence, Johnson was only one of Johnny's influences. Like any Delta player worth his corner stool, Shines took the best of what he had around him, made it his own, and kept on playing. In the jukes and roadhouses where Johnny plied his trade throughout the 1930's, Shines was famous for being able to perform entire sets, improvising all the way. To be clear: Shines was no Johnson imitator and he was far more than a "living link" to the Delta days of yore. He was its evolution.

Albums like this, still a relative-obscurity in its current form, reinforce the belief that sometimes life don't get much finer than Delta blues and acoustic Shines.

Peace, Mudcatz


A refugee from my old hard drive, I'm afraid I've no idea who the original uploader was for this one, but my sincerest thanks go to him.

The 1973 vinyl release...


Johnny Shines
Chicago Blues Festival 1972
Black & Blue, 1973

1. I Believe I'll Make a Change
2. Nobody's Fault But Mine
3. Back to the Steel Mill
4. The Devil's Daughter
5. Abide My Wish

1. Mean Black Gobbler
2. Lost Letter Blues
3. Freight Train
4. My Best Friend
5. The Blue Horizon

Link


...And the 2002 re-issue...




Johnny Shines
Takin' the Blues Back South
Black & Blue 2002



1. I Believe I'll Make a Change
2. Nobody's Fault But Mine
3. The Devil's Daughter
4. Back to the Steel Mill
5. Blood Ran Like Wine
6. Abide My Wish
7. Mean Black Gobbler
8. Lost Letter Blues
9. Freight Train
10. My Best Friend
11. the Blue Horizon
12. Mean Black Gobbler (alt.)

Link

Blue Monday: John Lee @ University Aula, '76

These cold wet nights must have been invented to get a wood fire going and sprawl out with the blues. Something smooth and deep. I have seen this John Lee Hooker show as having taken place in Salzburg--and that just ain't so. This gig actually hails from the Aula Der Universitat in Koln. But it don't really matter where this one took place; it's a spot-on dose of Hooker on anybody's road-map.

John Lee's out in front of the Coast To Coast Blues Band for this outing, a line-up that featured Jim Kahr on guitar, Roger Brouse on bass, and Ken Swank on the drums. Kahr also handles vocal duties on As the Years Go Passing By. Kahr's guitar work for this gig, and especially this song, is tight and tasty indeed.

But John Lee Hooker's at center stage and he delivers a roughly half-hour set mixing live Hooker staples such as Crawlin Kingsnake and Serves Me Right to Suffer with juicy little rarities like Charles Brown's Black Night.

Time to turn the lights low and get you & your lady into something more comfortable. It's plenty warm in here. John Lee Hooker's in the house.

Peace, Mudcatz


John Lee Hooker
Aula Der Universitat
Cologne, Germany
June 18th, 1976


1. Intro
2. Goin' To California
3. Crawlin' King Snake
4. You're So Fine
5. It Serves Me Right To Suffer
6. As The Years Go Passing By
7. Black Night Is Falling
8. Can't Stop Groovin'

Link