Description
Release Date: 2019
Label: Acrobat Music
Track List
Disc 1
1 Bad Luck
2 Rock Me Mama
3 New Orleans Bound
4 I Can’t Live Happy
5 Bugger Bugger Boy
6 Ethel Mae
7 She’s Gone Schoolboy
8 Strange Letter Blues Schoolboy
9 Bad Feeling Blues
10 Lightnin’ Slim Boogie
11 I Can’t Be Successful
12 Lightnin’ Blues
13 Sugar Plum
14 Just Made Twenty One
15 Goin’ Home
16 Wondering And Goin’
17 Bad Luck And Trouble
18 Have Your Way
19 Mean Ole Lonesome Train
20 I’m Grown
21 I’m A Rollin’ Stone
22 Love Me Mama
23 Hoodoo Blues
Disc 2
1 It’s Mighty Crazy
2 My Starter Won’t Work
3 Long Leanie Mama
4 I’m Leavin’ You Baby
5 Feelin’ Awful Blue
6 Sweet Little Woman
7 Lightnin’s Troubles
8 Rooster Blues
9 “G.I.” Slim
10 Tom Cat Blues
11 Bed Bug Blues
12 Too Close Blues
13 My Little Angel Chile
14 Cool Down Baby
15 Nothing But The Devil
16 I Just Don’t Know
17 Somebody Knockin’
18 I’m Tired Waiting Baby
19 Hello Mary Lee
20 Mind Your Own Business
21 You’re Old Enough To Understand
22 I’m Warning You Baby
23 Winter Time Blues
Notes
Guitarist, singer and songwriter Lightnin’ Slim (real name Otis Hicks) was born in Louisiana in 1913 and was a pioneer and first prominent exponent of the “Swamp Blues” style, coming relatively late in life to recording in his early 40s to record his best-known work during the late 1950s and early ‘60s, before retreating from the business until being re-discovered and brought back to performing in the early 1970s. His music became a significant influence on British artists during the ‘60s blues boom. Swamp blues, focused in the clubs of Baton Rouge, is a laid-back but highly rhythmic blues style, influenced by Cajun music, and which the book “Music USA: A Rough Guide” states is characterised by “eerie echo, shuffle beats, tremolo guitars, searing harmonica and sparse percussion”. This great-value 46-track 2-CD set comprises all the titles which Lightnin’ Slim recorded for the Feature, Ace and Excello labels during these years, including the only R&B chart hit of his career “Rooster Blues”. He is accompanied on these recordings by a variety of other Louisiana musicians, most notably the harmonica player Lazy Lester. This collection offers an entertaining insight into the music of a highly individual artist as well as a distinctive strand of regional blues.
