King Biscuit Boys - Me and The Devil Blues & Down So Long (1973)

The entries in Schoolkids' Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival series have been a dodgy affair thus far; some volumes hit the bullseye while others distinctly fall into that "guess you had to be there" category. To be fair, not all of the performances are worth documenting, some of them suffering from obtrusive, loud funk bands cluttering up everything, and Schoolkids has problems assigning proper song titles and credits. And yes, these should all come with historical importance/audio disclaimers; even if these are multi-track mobile unit masters, there's still that fluctuating mix that comes from the old late '60s/early '70s mentality of taking a hit off a joint while simultaneously pushing a fader on a recording console. Okay, that's the bad part, now on to the good stuff. If low-down gut-bucket juke joint blues floats your boat, then the nine selections by the King Biscuit Boys is just the thing you've been waiting to hear. The King Biscuit Boys were a floating personnel of gentlemen who all worked the famous radio show back in the '50s. At this stage of the game they were fronted by Houston Stackhouse and Joe Willie Wilkins on guitars and Sonny Blake on harmonica with jake-legged "what are we doing here" support from the truly clueless Melvin Lee on bass and Homer Jackson on drums. But Joe Willie, Stack, and Sonny are just too real, too down home to be worried about anything except flat laying it out, so if they aren't paying any attention, then why should we? There's goof-ups galore, like the bass player taking a chorus and a half to figure the song isn't in the key he thinks it's in ("Me and the Devil"), the whole band trying to figure what key Joe Willie's in on "It's Too Bad." Yeah, if it's perfection you're after, you came to the wrong address, but the stuff is just so potent and utterly charming, it sets all malfunctions squarely in the file 'take the hairy with the smooth' file. You want to hear some blues, check this out. Scary.
The Walter Horton set brings back a flood of positive memories for this writer; Hey, I was there, I saw this set as it went down and it was a killer. Volume and fader fluctuations aside, Horton was having the time of his life and the backing band of Johnny Nicholas on guitar, Fran Christina on drums and Sarah Brown on bass from Nicholas' band, the Boogie Brothers, were following Big Walter's every crazy musical move without ever letting go of the groove, no small feat, believe me. If you're even a little bit of a blues harp aficionado, put this one in your CD player and prepare to be astounded. Big Walter Horton on an inspired night with a good backup unit and a fresh harp was a musical force to be reckoned with. The man could blow, oh Lord, how the man could blow. Review by Cub Koda

Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival Vol. 4

Category:

Music

Tags:

• robert
• johnson
• king
• biscuit
• boys
• me
• and
• the
• devil
• blues
• electric

[cedricleecason]

Did Walter play every song in the Key of A with an A harp? I havent heard him yet play a D harp in second position. GREAT!!!