BUDDY GUY: SOUTHSIDE REUNION (w. Memphis Slim) (1972)
1) When Buddy Comes To Town;
2) How Long Blues; 3) Good Time Charlie; 4) You Call Me At Last; 5) You're The
One; 6) No; 7) Help Me Some; 8) Rolling And Tumbling; 9*) Jamming At The Castle;
10*) You're The One (alt. version).
Strictly speaking, this is more of a Memphis
Slim record than a Buddy Guy one: he is listed first of the two, he sings most
of the vocals, and he apparently dominates the track selection. But that does
not formally prevent one from including it in Buddy Guy's discography, and
besides, it's a nice record, so let us use Buddy's involvement in it as a
pretext to give it a friendly mention that it totally deserves.
The session in question was recorded by Slim
and Buddy when they happened to cross paths in Europe, when Buddy was touring
with the Stones, and is marked as having taken place on September 17-18, 1970.
Subsequent information, as it always happens, in controversial: apparently, the
album was released by Warner Bros. in
1972, but since then, there's been at least several official and unofficial
re-releases, on different labels and with different track listings. My version
is a 2004 CD reissue on the French specialized Maison de Blues label, with
eight «main» and two «bonus» tracks, whatever that might mean in the present
case. Yours might be different, and in time, we may hold an international
symposium to sort it out and draw scientific conclusions.
In the meantime, what matters is that this is
(predictably) not a very original or deeply inspired blues jam session, but
(unpredictably) with a pretty high fun quotient. With Junior Wells joining the
dynamic duo on harmonica, and a strong brass section in tow, much of the accent
is placed on energetic boogie numbers, like the opening ʻWhen Buddy Comes To
Townʼ, and there are few pianists in this world better suited to boogieing the
hell out of their instrument than Memphis Slim, one of the few to not only
perfectly feel the spirit of the pre-war jump blues of Pete Johnson and Amos
Milburn, but to expand on it with more complex, but no less fun playing. On all
these numbers, it is Slim, not Buddy, who is the real hero — but Buddy is also
doing his best, playing "thin" jump blues guitar in the style of
Chuck Berry or even T-Bone Walker rather than doing his Hendrix imitations.
Most of the songs here are credited to
"Peter Chatman" — the name of Memphis Slim's (John Len Chatman's)
father, to whom Slim respectfully credited all of his own compositions; but,
also quite predictably, there is really not much here in terms of composition,
since you can find all of these melodies on, say, a best-of compilation by
T-Bone Walker or quite a few other old rhythm-and-bluesmen. Only ʻRolling And
Tumblingʼ continues to be credited to Muddy Waters, even if that is actually the one song that has
changed the most, being converted to a slow 12-bar blues and losing its
distinctive melody — a rare case where old lyrics were transposed to a new
arrangement rather than vice versa.
I cannot insist that Memphis Slim and Buddy Guy
are a perfect pair for each other, but I do know that two great players on a generic blues recording is always a better
bet than one, and if you throw in Junior's harmonica, you get stuff like
ʻJamming At The Castleʼ, three minutes of fast, intense blues-boogie that is
well worth the price of the entire album. And it does include some of the best
examples of Buddy's "traditional-restrained", but still mighty
energetic guitar playing that would rarely, if ever, be heard in his late
Seventies' / early Eighties' period, let alone the post-Damn Right revival — so a gentle thumbs up is perfectly justified.
"Only ʻRolling And Tumblingʼ continues to be credited to Muddy Waters"
ReplyDeleteWhich was never right to begin with. Crediting it to Hambone Willie Newbern feels much more sensible to me - even if he might not have written it, he was the first to record it!