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personnel involved and they later played on John’s album “Jazz Blues Fusion” which
featured some of the tracks here. We begin with a 12-minute track ‘Driving
Dangerously’ featuring John on vocals, organ and harmonica with the track building

towards the end and ‘Mess Around’ is a shorter more conventional jump blues with
riffing horns.

‘Good Time Boogie – That’s Alright With You’ starts off as a 12-bar blues with the
band all taking solos then after Hartley’s drum solo it becomes ‘That’s Alright With

You’. ‘Times Are Getting Tougher’ is a (short) slow blues featuring both Robinson’s
vocals and guitar and ‘I Wish I Could Understand – Baby What Do You Have to Lose?’
is another slow blues with nice solos from the brass section. We finish with ‘Dry

Throat’ a 20-minute blues song “about drinking” again all the band take solos and
the track builds to a climax at the end. There are only seven tracks here but as they

are all quite long this does make for over an hour’s worth of music and although this
may not be one of the Bluesbreakers’ most celebrated line ups I thought that they
did sound very good with a swinging rhythm section and the brass rather than the

lead guitar doing most of the heavy lifting.

Graham Harrison

Toby Lee—Icons Vol. 1—House of Tone

Toby Lee will be 18 in late January ‘23 but this is already
his third album release, he played BB King’s Blues Club
when he was just 10 years old and has also joined Joe

Bonamassa onstage at the Royal Albert Hall. This album
features Toby paying homage to some of his favourite

guitarists backed by a band of Alex Phillips (bass), John
Trier (keyboards) and Wayne Proctor (drums) - Proctor
also co-produces with Oli Brown who adds his guitar to

five tracks. We kick off with raucous reading of Doyle Bramhall’s ‘Green Light Girl’
then it’s Gary Clark Jr.’s ‘Bright Lights’ – these aren’t the obvious choices you’d expect

for blues guitar heroes but they are obviously some of Toby’s personal favourites,
reflecting the taste of a new generation of blues fan.

We carry on with covers of songs by other recent modern blues guitar players
including Kenny Wayne Shepherd (‘Blue on Black’), Joe Bonamassa (‘The Ballad of
John Henry’), Jonny Lang (‘Still Rainin’) and Jeff Healey (‘See the Light’). However,

Toby also salutes older players such as Stevie Ray Vaughan with his ‘The House is
Rockin’ which does really rock with its driving piano and nice versions of Gary

Moore’s ‘Midnight Blues’ and Alvin Lee’s ‘Bluest Blues’. He also bravely tackles
Hendrix’s ‘Wind Cries Mary’ with a very subtle and faithful version and the oldest
cover here is of Freddie King’s instrumental ‘Hideaway’ - again done very well – not

an exact copy of Freddie’s original - or of the many versions since - but reflecting