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Blind Lemon Pledge—Lemon Live!—Ofeh
Records

This live album, (BLP’s eleventh release) was

recorded over two performances at the ‘Chit Chat
Café’ in Pacifica, California. The thirteen numbers
here include six originals and seven covers.

Bay Area bluesman, BLP (James Byfield) leads on
vocals and guitars, with Winston "Sioux City Slim"
Andrews, harmonica; Mr. Peter Grenell; bass and

Rockin' Juli Moscovitz on drums.

The sawing, sweeping steel guitar opener ‘Blackeyed Suzie’ is a bright and breezy

foot tapping tribute to Son House. ‘Hard Heart Honey Bee’, is led by a sawing
harmonica and swinging brush work. The rolling, goodtime ‘Sugar Rush’ continues
the harmonica and brushwork swinging feel. Fenton Robinson’s ‘Somebody Loan
Me a Dime’ is downbeat and melancholy with a suitably dragging, lonesome

harmonica, an underpinning, morose guitar enhances the mood.

Muddy Waters’ ‘She’s Into Something’, is infused with an infectious, rolling Rumba

beat. The combination of mournful steel guitar and harmonica on Muddy Waters’
‘I Feel Like Goin' Home’, is as suitably downbeat as it is satisfying.

The simplicity of emotion in Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’, is enticingly drawn upon, as BLP’s

almost fragile soaring vocal splendidly entwines with the emotive snaking harmonica.

Blind Lemon Jefferson’s 1927 ‘I Know You Rider’, also recorded by The Mississippi
Sheiks, possesses a breathless, urgently paced harmonica and pumping percussion,

all the while BLP wails away.

The melancholy, painfully delivered harmonica on the slowly swinging ‘You, Can't
Get There From Here’, delivers a mournful tale of hurt, woe and sadness.

Tommy Johnson’s 1928 ‘Big Road Blues’, and ‘Railroad Mama’, are both brightly,
rolling stompers with an enticing mixture of wailing harmonica and crisply stinging

guitar.

Willie Dixon's ‘The Red Rooster’ is as wonderfully sharp, stark and drawling as the
original.

‘Junkyard Dog’ is actually and quite literally, a Howling success.

Highly recommended!

Brian Harman