Howlin’ with Muddy, Buddy and Sonny Boy
This is a compilation album that isn’t, a live album that isn’t (at least in a couple of spots), and a Muddy Waters album that isn’t, if one counts the appearances by four other artists on it. But for all things it isn’t, it is also just happens to be one of the greatest and certainly most underrated live blues album of all time, unbelievably crude, raw, and as real as it gets. Originally issued on Chess’ Argo label during the height of the folk music blues revival (hence the goofy title), this was a record that was aimed at a white market who responded in kind. But anybody purchasing it thinking they were getting some nice acoustic coffeehouse blues were in for the reality-check shock of their lives. Recorded on July 26, 1963 at a WPOA live radio broadcast emceed by local Chicago disc jockey Big Bill Hill emanating from the Copacabana Club (hence when this was reissued in 1967, it was retitled Blues From Big Bill’s Copacabana), this features Buddy Guy’s band as the backup band for everybody, augmented by Muddy’s right hand man, pianist Otis Spann. Although Big Bill announces the presence of Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson on the album’s intro, they’re no-shows; the studio version of Williamson’s “Bring It On Home” appears here with dubbed on applause (along with the studio version of Guy’s “Worried Blues,” one of the two bits of audio chicanery here). Everything else is just amazingly raw, crude and blistering, with some of the most electrifying Buddy Guy guitar ever committed to tape, droning saxes, thundering drums, and Otis Spann anchoring everything with consummate elegance, as nobody’s bothered to check their tuning in the last half dozen drinks or more. The combination of performances of Guy, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, and Sonny Boy in tandem with Waters would certainly checklist this one into ‘various artists’ category, but with half of the 10 tracks here being fronted by Waters, it’s clearly Muddy’s show all the way. His performances of “I Got My Mojo Working,” “She’s 19 Years Old,” “Clouds In My Heart,” “Sitting And Thinking,” and the vocal trio effort with Guy and Dixon on the show opening “Wee Wee Baby” are nothing less than exemplary. No matter how you slice it or end up filing it, one would be very hard pressed indeed to find a live blues album that captures the spirit and a moment in time the way this one does. Unavailable on compact disc as of press time, but worth tracking down in its vinyl incarnations at any cost. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide
(22 votes, average: 4.32 out of 5)
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(30 votes, average: 3.73 out of 5)
