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Incorporated sideman Graham Bond, Zoot Money and early John Mayall. Also we have a couple of
blues tracks by Davy Graham featuring his guitar and vocals with minimal bass and drum backing.
We also get records by visiting American blues singers Otis Spann and Champion Jack Dupree,
(both with Eric Clapton on guitar), Eddie Boyd (with Peter Green on guitar), Mae Mercer and Curtis
Jones.
The later sixties tracks include John Mayall (with Clapton and also Peter Green), Savoy Brown, Ten
Years After and the Keef Hartley Band. There are also a number of rare oddities here, Rod Stewart’s
‘Good Morning Little School Girl’ from 1964, from Sheffield Dave Berry’s version of ‘Hoochie
Coochie Man’, from Liverpool Steve Aldo with Jimmy Reed's ‘Baby What You Want Me To Do’ and
from Wales Amen Corner (with Andy Fairweather Low) covering Nina Simone's ‘Gin House Blues’.
We also get two Peter Green instrumentals ‘Greeny’ and ‘Curly’ both backed up by the current
Bluesbreakers and ‘Out of Reach’ which features Peter on both guitar and vocals.
There are some great tracks here—for me both Clapton and Peter Green's guitar playing during this
period was exemplary and this compilation includes some lesser-heard examples—we also get to
see how the music developed from its beginnings with Alexis Korner and there are also some
interesting rarities. However, limiting the tracks to just the Decca/Deram labels obviously
decreases the scope of the compilation and the exclusion of the Stones seems a strange choice as
they were the leading and easily the most popular blues act of the early sixties—I can only think
this is to do with licensing issues. Click here for track list.
Graham Harrison
John Primer and Bob Corritore The Gypsy Woman Told Me
Vizztone Label ASIN: B084Z5BGR4
This is the third collaboration between these two—Chicago blues
veteran guitarist Primer and Phoenix-based harp player Corritore
—and like its predecessors it is very authentic sounding Chicago
blues, as you'd expect from Mr. Primer, an ex-sideman with
Muddy Waters, Junior Wells and Magic Slim, indeed the album is
named after the Muddy Waters track ‘The Gypsy Woman Told
Me’. The album was recorded in 2018 and 2019 in various places
with various personnel and produced by Corritore, Clarke Rigsby,
and Kid Andersen. The band includes guitarists Jimi Smith and Billy Flynn, pianist Bob Welch and
Andersen on organ (!), three bassists—Kedar Roy, Mike Hightower and Troy Sandow; and two
drummers—June Core and Brian Fahey.
We begin with Chick Willis’ ‘Keep-A-Driving’, a lovely shuffle in typical Chicago blues ‘ensemble’
style, while ‘Knocking on Your Door’ picks up the pace with Bob’s distorted harp driving the track
along. ‘Gambling Blues’ (one of my favourites) is just John and Bob with a more country sound that
reminded me of John Lee Hooker. ‘Little Bitty Woman’ is a rocking Primer original and features
John on slide, it reminded me of Junior Parker’s 'Love My Baby' and features great piano from Bob
Welch, while Little Milton's 'Walking the Back Streets and Crying' is a slow blues with more nice
piano. It’s not all old classic blues though, 'I Got the Same Old Blues' is the J.J. Cale song which John
and Bob bring new life to adding a bit of Chicago grit to Mr. Cale’s normally laid-back groove and