BROWNIE McGHEE: BLUES IS TRUTH (1976)
1) The Blues Had A Baby; 2)
I'm Going To Keep On Loving; 3) Walk On; 4) Rainy Day; 5) Christina; 6) Don't
Dog Your Woman; 7) Mean And Evil; 8) Wine Sporty Orty; 9) Blues Is Truth; 10)
Bunkhouse; 11) Key To The Highway; 12) Blues On Parade.
Formally speaking, Brownie McGhee had a
veritable shitload of albums released for the listening pleasures of Greenwich
Village crusaders in the last four decades of his life, but most of them were
released as part of the «Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee» duo act, where Sonny
was usually billed first and Brownie humbly came second (although there were
multiple exceptions, too). In any case, we will use this as a loophole to
postpone reviews of some of these
albums (talking separately about each of them would be cruel and unwarranted
punishment, considering that, as rumor has it, almost every show that the two played together in any club or cafeteria
had been captured on tape, not to mention studio sessions).
As for Brownie solo, he had considerably few
sessions in comparison, and most of those are not altogether easy to find or
not particularly worth finding. I will limit myself to this one album, recorded
in May 1976 with a bunch of friends at Minot Sound Studios in White Plains, NY;
friends included Bobby Foster and Louisiana Red on guitars, Sugar Blue on
harmonica, Sammy Price on piano, Alex Blake on bass, and Brian Brake on drums —
actually, one hell of a band, when you start researching all of these guys'
pedigrees, and, since Brownie himself only plays acoustic guitar and sings, his
presence here is more of a «guiding hand» than of a legendary dominator — he
conducts, gives orders on soloing, but his personal
role in this friendly get-together is limited; then again, when you got such a
great band playing for you, keeping a low profile might just be the most
sensible thing to do anyway.
As easily as I usually get bored with generic
electric blues albums, these twelve songs keep the fun quotient high and the
friendly atmosphere dense throughout. There is a sensible level of diversity
as they pay tribute to multiple blues styles (Chicago, Delta, New Orleans; even
jump blues is covered with a version of Stick McGhee's ʽDrinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Deeʼ,
here retitled as ʽWine Sporty Ortyʼ), and almost everybody gets to shine one
way or another — Louisiana Red and his slinky slide leads are the obvious number
one pretender, but the real musical superhero of the album is Alex Blake, whose
bass parts are completely individual and independent, and often have much more
to say than the guitars of his colleagues.
Curiously, the album kicks off with a newly
written tune, ʽThe Blues Had A Babyʼ ("and they named it rock'n'roll"),
which would fairly soon be appropriated by Muddy Waters for his comeback LP, Hard Again — considering that there is
fairly little rock'n'roll on this record, but I guess that this was just a
subtle reminder of sorts, Brownie's message to the kids about how there is more
to life than rock'n'roll, and Blues Is
Truth in general is not a bad way to prove that.
It is interesting, however, that there are no
signs here whatsoever of Brownie's original vibe, the entertainment-oriented, bluesman-meets-hillbilly-style
«Piedmont blues»; above everything else, Brownie knew very well who the buying
clientele would be — white college kids — and what the clientele would want to
hear (Chicago teachers of white electric bluesmen). I am not going as far as to
suggest that ʽKey To The Highwayʼ was included due to the song's popularization
by Eric Clapton, but this could have been one of the factors, too. Not that
this is a complaint or anything — with Blake's basslines and Red's guitar
playing, the album goes down easily and pleasantly, and anybody who'd try to
put down a 1915-born popular entertainer for «giving the people exactly what
they want» would have to have no sensibility whatsoever. In any case, for an
album of this kind, Blues Is Truth
is seriously above average level, and clearly deserves a thumbs up.
Check "Blues Is Truth" (MP3) on Amazon
"anybody who'd try to put down a 1915-born popular entertainer for «giving the people exactly what they want» would have to have no sensibility whatsoever."
ReplyDeleteThis was precisely what Deep Purple Mark II and Dio-era Rainbow shows were about and we never hear that complaint about them. Generally people only like surprises within strict limits; inserting Metallica in a Mozart opera just for the sake of it isn't a good idea either. This even applies to Robert Zimmermann etc: his fans expect them to not give a shit.
A solipsist artist doesn't make sense.
MNB your ability to connect any part of musical history to Deep Purple is inspiring. You should come up with a Six Degrees of Purple search engine or something!
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