Blues for Aficionados

If you aren't adverse to CD's, try to find a copy of Up The Line by The Gary Smith Blues Band. Gary is very well known in the San Francisco Bay Area Blues scene, and has the best harp tone I've ever heard, bar none. His mentor was Charlie Mussellwhite, and Gary's role model is The Master---Little Walter. Gary is the first harp player I played with, way back in 1969! He had just switched from drums, so we had that in common. 

Gary's Facebook posts are usually about the latest tubes he has tried in his tube amps. He is VERY serious about the tone he creates, the mark of a superior musician (along with phrasing, and musicality).

The album also features great musical accompaniment from the best Blues players in the Bay Area (known locally as the Blues Mafia ;-). I've seen and heard him and they live, and if you live in the area, so should you.

Steve Howell and the Mighty Men.

Zuzu Bollin

ZUZU BOLLIN TEXAS BLUESMAN

A cast of thousands, including Duke Robillard and David "Fathead" Newman.
Antones Records & Tapes   1991

Notes: "An important chapter of Zuzu Bollin's history must be written in Austin.  After hearing Zuzu in Dallas one night in 1988 Clifford Antone, owner of Antones's nightclub, befriended him and invited him to begin performing at his club....Antone made plans to record him, and you can hear the results on this record.  Zuzu's story has a bittersweet ending.  He died in 1990.  That Zuzu did not live to complete the Antone's sessions is a great loss to us all, but thankfully we still have these wonderful recordings.  Fans of Texas Blues owe a debt of gratitude to Chuck Nevitt and Clifford Antone for caring enough to capture Zuzu just the way he would have liked: Texas Style."

ANTONES is / was a well known blues club in Austin, Texas.  He also owns / owned a record store that sold / sells blues CDs, LPs, Tapes and associated stuff.  I spent many a dollar there.  My routine was, Waterloo records, then walk a block to Tower Records, then walk a block to Antone's Blues record store.  Those were the days.


Why Don't You Eat Where You Slept Last Night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFv0FOCsI9M

Zuzu Bollin ‎– Zu's Blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB7gvpI2KxE

Rebecca
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYyizQvlGG0

Kidney Stew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBchUpap0lo

Blues in the Dark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dqiLUQIkoU

Cheers

James Booker

RESURRECTION OF THE BAYOU MAHARAJAH

Rounder Records   1993

Notes: "For Booker fans, then, this album and its companion (Spiders on the Keys, Rounder 2119) are cause for celebration.  Here is James Booker as his New Orleans fans knew him--passionate and dazzling; alternately extroverted or painfully lost in his own world.  For if James Carroll Booker lll was one of the greatest pianists of the century, he was also plagued by what many of his friends considered to be mental illness, and by a lifelong battle with drugs and alcohol (a problem Booker traced to his prescription after being hit by an ambulance when he was a boy)."

Real New Orleans music.  You can hear the wooden floors.

Medley: Slow Down / Bony Maronie / Knock On Wood / I Heard It Through The Grapevine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zya7-ekMXw

Medley: Tico Tico / Papa Was A Rascal (Live At The Maple Leaf Bar, New Orleans, LA / 1977-1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA5Aoq32N4g

St. James Infirmary (Live At The Maple Leaf Bar, New Orleans, LA / 1977-1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFRKcW_s6YQ

Medley: Life / Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee / It Should Have Been Me (Live At The Maple Leaf Bar, New...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa7w0yYjXNs

Cheers

Grew up w Clarence brown, buddy guy, Johnny winter, many many rare blues LPs’ from parents record collection.

   Love blues,....blues strayed it all, no blues, no rock, no metal, it all stems from southern blues, Midwest blues, etc. !!