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an arrangement of a traditional song, called ‘Foxsquirrel’. J. B. had become interested
in the sounds of African music, and he called his version of it ‘African Hunch’.

I remember the song being on a Sue label blues compilation LP called “Pure Blues

Vol 1”, which subsequently appeared as a cut price LP, ‘This Is Blues”, which was on
Island Records. Anyway, the single was also released in the UK on the Sue label, and
it must have caused something of a stir within the blues fraternity, most of whom

didn’t like to stray too far from the strict format of the music.

J. B. got the chance to record again in May 1965, and perhaps buoyed up by his solo
recordings for Paul Oliver, produced an entire album of his solo acoustic work,

entitled “Alabama Blues”, which also features Freddy Below on drums. It was
recorded in Chicago, and produced by Willie Dixon
Click here to see (who still wasn’t able to get J. B. to record any of his

and listen to songs!). The title track is a very poignant song relating
to extreme racism in Alabama (which Peter Green also
Peter Green’s recorded a beautiful acoustic version of a couple of

version of years later). Once again, J. B. used his songs to express
his feelings about politics, war, and life in general. The
‘Alabama Blues’. album was initially released just in France, but

eventually became widely available. His guitar and

vocal work on this album is, in my opinion, outstanding, playing modern acoustic
blues, and it’s certainly my favourite of all his work.

By the mid-1960s the blues ‘revival’ was most definitely under way, no doubt to the

relief of many artistes struggling to get by. The annual Lippmann-Rau Folk Blues
UK/European tour had been in the calendar since 1962, and these audiences loved
the original blues performers.

J. B.’s Sue single, and to a lesser extent (at least initially) the “Alabama Blues” album,
created an audience for him in the UK and Europe, and consequently he was added

to the line up for the 1965 tour, as part of a very strong bill including John Lee
Hooker, Buddy Guy, Eddie Boyd, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Walter ‘Shaky’ Horton,
Roosevelt Sykes, Doctor Ross and Big Mama Thornton - it makes your mouth water
just thinking about it! J. B. was featured on one track on the resulting album.

In September 1966 J. B. had the chance to record another acoustic album with Freddy
Below, again in Chicago, and again with Dixon producing (and again, all self penned
material - Willie must have given up by then!). This album, following on from the

previous one, contained many songs about black urban life in the USA, which would
have been classed as protest songs if they had been sung by a white performer. The
two albums were full of very personal songs, so different from what was on offer

from most of the blues artistes of the day.

As far as I can tell, the album was initially released posthumously on John Mayall’s

short lived Crusade label (part of Polydor), and interestingly it also contained a