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Various Artists —The Unissued 1963 Blues Festival—Red
Lightning ASIN : B0CN3R8QS2

Starting in 1962 two German promoters Horst Lippman and Fritz
Rau brought to Europe ‘The American Folk Blues Festivals’ which
every year presented a whole evening of authentic American
blues singers, both older acts and also the latest artists. The
concerts were shown on television and records were also issued
featuring the artists live or in the studio. This record of a concert
from the 1963 Festival recorded live in Germany is previously
unissued and features Memphis Slim, Sonny Boy Williamson
(no.2) and Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy and, like the other festivals, the
acts were ‘curated’ in the States by Willie Dixon who plays bass here alongside Billie Stepney
(drums). Memphis Slim gets us underway with three songs featuring his piano and vocals as
well as Murphy’s guitar, including a very ‘perky’ version of Big Bill Broonzy’s ‘All By Myself’. Far
better is his relaxed rendition of another song associated with Big Bill ‘In the Evening (When the
Sun Goes Down)’.

Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy gives us two instrumentals ‘Grooving on Bounce’ and ‘Taking Off’ featuring
his guitar backed up by the piano, bass and drums. Finally, we have five songs by Sonny Boy
Williamson (Rice Miller), starting out with two solo pieces ‘99’ and ‘Bye Bye Bird’, both have
been recorded many times before both in the studio and live but you can clearly hear in this
performance the power and charisma that he had and he gets the best reception of the night.
He’s accompanied by the other performers on the other songs – three SBW classics ‘All My Love

in Vain’, ‘Your Funeral and My Trial’ and ‘Don’t Start Me Talking’ – all fine versions. Sonny Boy
Williamson (no.2) is often regarded as inferior to the original Sonny Boy Williamson but you can
clearly hear from these songs that he was both a great singer and harp player as well as being a
wonderful song writer. I vividly remember seeing the ‘The American Folk Blues Festivals’ on TV
as a teenager and it was partly what made me into a blues fan all those years ago and while
historically it is nice to now have this recording I couldn’t really claim that it is essential
listening as all Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson’s work is so widely available.

Graham Harrison

The Madison Crawl—Twilight at the Zoo—Rotten Records
ASIN : B0CJP49QDF

The Madison Crawl are a vintage-sounding jump blues outfit
from Cleveland, Ohio and they recorded this album live at Cleve-
land’s Zoo (!) in 2022. We start with the 12-minute ‘King Biscuit
Theme’ and the album also has an 11-minute version of the
jazz/blues standard ‘The Hucklebuck’ as well as a ten and a half
minute exotic-sounding ‘Brass Balls’ – with all these tracks giving
the band members lots of solos. The other tracks are more struc-
tured with vocals by bandleader/bassist Chris Stovicek and the
brass section cutting loose on numbers like Louis Jordan’s ‘Ain’t
Nobody Here But Us Chickens’ and ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby’. Although I’m often

amazed by the high standard of local bands in the USA I’m afraid that I wasn’t too impressed by
The Madison Crawl (I thought that particularly the harmonica player wasn’t up to the standard
of the rest of the group) although it all probably sounded OK if you were there at the zoo on the
night.