BUDDY GUY: BRING 'EM IN (2005)
1) Now You're Gone; 2) Ninety
Nine And One Half; 3) What Kind Of Woman Is This; 4) Somebody's Sleeping In My
Bed; 5) I Put A Spell On You; 6) On A Saturday Night; 7) Ain't No Sunshine; 8)
I've Got Dreams To Remember; 9) Lay Lady Lay; 10) Cheaper To Keep Her/Blues In
The Night; 11) Cut You Loose; 12) The Price You Gotta Pay; 13) Do Your Thing.
Despite the revealing title, not all of these songs, as could have been
thought (and easily been done), feature outside guest stars; in fact, more than
half of the album is just Buddy and his regular band, whatever it was at the
time. However, guest-studded sessions, no matter how much time is actually
being spent with the guests, tend not to work too well for Buddy: there's too
much emphasis on having collective fun and not enough emphasis on giving the
listener a real good musical reason to buy the album. And in that respect, Bring 'Em In is no exception — once
again, here is a «merely okay» record that never shows that one extra spark to
bring it over the top, like Sweet Tea
or even Slippin' In.
The collaborations themselves at least merit
some discussion. ʽI Put A Spell On Youʼ is set to a Latin, Santana-esque
rhythm, and sure enough, Carlos is here in person, forming quite an incendiary
duet with Mr. Guy; perhaps they could have chosen some less obvious material to
cover, but they do bring out the best (or, perhaps, simply the most buoyant and
arrogant) in each other, and there are a couple moments here when their
thunder-and-lightning soloing styles cross paths and you seem caught up in a one-of-a-kind
Chicago-Mexican blizzard. Next to this, a duet with John Mayer could seem a
total disaster; fortunately, they avoid it, instead making Mayer add some
relatively inoffensive and quiet lead lines to Buddy's cover of Otis Redding's
ʽI've Got Dreams To Rememberʼ (which is like any other Buddy cover of any
classic soul number: technically competent, but completely expendable in the
long run).
Elsewhere, Robert Randolph adds a pleasant
pedal steel part to ʽLay Lady Layʼ, but that song tends to always sound cheesy
and sleazy in anybody's hands but its author's, and this version is no
exception — Buddy's duet with Anthony Hamilton just ends up being generic soul
fodder. Finally, there's a weakly advertised Keith Richards on Keb' Mo's ʽThe
Price You Gotta Payʼ, but he neither sings nor plays lead guitar. Actually,
both of these may be good things, but there ain't a Keith-worthy riff here,
either, so ultimately, I guess, the point of having him here was merely for the
most advanced of Stones fanatics to buy the record (I suppose that there are
more people out there, anyway, vowing to own every recording Keef has ever
played on, than there are people out there ready to go out and regularly buy up
every new Buddy Guy release).
Of the other tracks, with a little effort, I'd
single out Curtis Mayfield's ʽNow You're Goneʼ, which Buddy tries to sing like
a true falsetto crooner (not too bad) and crowns with some cool wah-wah work;
his own ʽWhat Kind Of Woman Is Thisʼ, a rare case of a riff-based Buddy
original that's sharp and swaggerish at the same time; and the lengthy epic
ʽCut You Looseʼ, musically based on the old ʽCatfish Blues / Rollin' Stoneʼ
groove and gradually putting itself in guitar overdrive — along the lines of
Hendrix's ʽVoodoo Chileʼ, which must have been Buddy's main inspiration for
this stuff. None of these songs have the unique aura of a ʽBaby Please Don't
Leave Meʼ, though: they are simply more powerful and decisive than everything
else.
For the record, the reason why John Mayer is
here is probably because the album was produced by Steve Jordan, who was at the
time a member of the John Mayer Trio (and who earlier drummed for Keith
Richards' X-Pensive Winos, so here's anouther connection); the backing band includes
Danny Kortchmar on guitar and Bernie Worrell on keyboards, all well-known
professional musicians, but without too much rapport between each other, if you know what I mean. All in all, a
classic case of "let's make working conditions so cozy and polished for
our superstar that he suffocates in them", sort of.
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