Ooh yeah @slaw, everybody I knew bought Taj’s first album in ’68, as well as his second (Natch’l Blues). My band included "She Caught The Katy And Left Me A Mule To Ride" in our repertoire. The great Jesse Ed Davis plays guitar on both albums (Ry Cooder on the first), and NB has Earl Palmer (!) on drums and Al Kooper on piano. Not too shabby! |
Yep @gosta, all the above are LP's. Mobile Fidelity also offers Bring The Family on SACD, but I haven't heard it. The Eclipse Recordings is on John's current label, the great New West Records. Also on that label are Buddy Miller, Richard Thompson, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, JD McPherson, and many more. New West masters their LP's purely analog, and puts this statement sticker on their covers: "Audio Mastered For Vinyl". |
Oops, I can't let John Hiatt remain unmentioned! He enlisted Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, and Jim Keltner to help him record his breakout album Bring The Family. John's kind of a Blues singer, and BTF was recorded in excellent sound at Village Recording in L.A. The original A & M pressing sounds good, as does my UK Demon Records LP (which has a different, and great, cover), and the album was also done by Mobile Fidelity. |
Yup David, and the better the artist, the higher his standards in musicians. Think about it: The first three guitarists in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers band and albums were (in order) Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor! The Yardbirds had Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, then Jimmy Page (well, 2 outta 3 ain’t bad ;-) ! Other guys who have always surrounded themselves with great musicians are Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Richard Thompson, Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale, Marty Stuart, T Bone Burnett, Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, Bonnie Raitt, and.....well, I could go on for quite awhile, so that’s enough outta me! |
True @slaw. But let’s not forget about the fantastic rhythm section on Boz’s album, the one I have been trying like Hell to hip all y’all to. They are named The Swampers, and were the house band at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, where all the classic Jerry Wexler-produced Atlantic Records albums were made (Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke, Dusty Springfield, etc.). The Swampers were/are: Roger Hawkins: drums David Hood: electric bass Barry Beckett: keyboards Jimmy Johnson: guitar They are THE best rhythm section I’ve ever heard, rivaled only by The Band, The Funk Brothers (Motown’s house band), Booker T & The MG’s, and The Hot Band (Emmylou Harris’ 1970’s band, whose members included Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, James Burton, Ron Tutt, John Ware, Hank DeVido, Albert Lee, Glen Hardin, Emory Gordy Jr, and a bunch of other superb musicians). Boz could have hired any band he wanted, and he chose them. For a reason! |
I just picked up a copy of Charlie Musselwhite's direct-to-disk LP on Crystal Clear Records, Times Gettin' Tougher Than Tough. I haven't listened to it yet, but all the Crystal Clear LP's I HAVE heard are fantastic. Why would this one be any different?! IMO, too many people automatically think of guitar-driven Blues music (and often that of English "Blues-Rock" players. Alvin Lee/Ten Years After is Blues?!), rather than harp-driven. I generally prefer the latter ( I worked with a great SF Bay Area player, Gary Smith. One oop album, real good Blues, average sq) . Too bad Little Walter wasn't recorded in better sound. His recordings are good enough to let the music through, but that's about it. |
Another Audioquest Blues artist is Terry Evans, who passed away just last year. He also made some great albums for Rounder Records (a fantastic label) with Bobby King, also in good sound. Terry and Bobby worked a lot with Ry Cooder. |
@slaw, haven’t heard that one, but I love SBW. He and The Hawks (later of course known as The Band) met up in drummer Levon Helm’s hometown of Selena, Arkansas in 1965, jammed for a day, and started making plans to go on the road together, they as his band. Before that could happen Sonny Boy met his maker, and The Hawks had to instead settle for being Dylan’s road band ;-) . Dylan put them on retainer, paying them whether or not they were working. That led to them following him up to Woodstock (they were living in the Chelsea Hotel in NYC) after his motorcycle accident (where he went to heal his wounds, or to detox off speed, whichever story you choose to believe ;-), where they found and rented the "Big Pink" house in nearby West Saugerties, the basement of same being where the majority of The Basement Tapes were recorded. Those recordings led to Capitol Records offering The Hawks a record deal in late ’67. Music From Big Pink by The Band was released July 1st, 1968, and the music world was immediately a very different place. Eric Clapton heard the album (played for him by George Harrison, legend has it), disbanded Cream, and went to Big Pink to hang with The Band, waiting for them to ask him to join. It eventually occurred to him: they neither required nor desired his services. When The Band made their debut live performance in 1969 (they couldn’t tour directly after the release of MFBP, as bassist Rick Danko had broken his arm), The Beatles flew over from England to be there. There are pics of them sitting on the floor of Winterland in San Francisco, right alongside other audience members. The last time I saw Levon perform live was while he was recovering from throat surgery to remove a Cancer (he was a heavy smoker his entire life, the knucklehead). He couldn’t sing, so he had daughter Amy along to do so in his place. The music was pure Blues, Levon’s first love, along with the Hillbilly he heard on The Grand Old Opry. |
A rereading of the above made me realize I inadvertently implied Muddy's Folk Singer is on Audioquest. It is not; it's original release in 1964 was on Chess Records, but the reference version is the reissue on Mobile Fidelity. Backing Muddy are Buddy Guy (guitar), Otis Spann (piano), Francis Clay (drums), and Willy Dixon (upright bass, as well as one of the album's producers), a super-group if there ever was one! |
If you’re talking about great recorded sound alone, I second the Audioquest label suggestion. A long-time reference disc in the Blues genre is Folk Singer by Muddy Waters. Be forewarned: it is Rural Acoustic Blues, not the amped-up Blues you hear from more modern (and usually white) practitioners of Blues/Rock, such as Blues Hammer (inside joke ;-) . It is an unfortunately truth that most of the best Blues (as well as other musical genres) was recorded in mediocre or worse sound quality. Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter are fantastic, but their recorded sq is not. Holt’s Law: The better the music, the worse the sound, and visa versa. |
