BLUES INCORPORATED
(ALEXIS KORNER)
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1962–1984 |
Classic rhythm & blues |
Herbie’s Tune (1964) |
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Album
released: Nov. 16, 1962 |
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Tracks: 1) Gotta Move; 2) Rain Is Such A
Lonesome Sound; 3) I Got My Brand On You; 4) Spooky But Nice; 5) Keep Your
Hands Off; 6) I Wanna Put A Tiger In
Your Tank; 7) I Got My Mojo Working; 8) Finkle’s Cafe; 9) Hoochie Coochie;
10) Down Town; 11) How Long, How Long Blues; 12) I Thought I Heard That Train
Whistle Blow. |
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First
things first: the main, if not only, reason why I bother writing about «Alexis
Korner's Blues Incorporated» is in the sphere of music history. Nobody except
for close friends and relatives would probably dare describe Mr. Alexis Korner
as an artistic visionary or even as a particularly gifted musician; yet it so
happened that Alexis Korner and nobody else became, essentially, no less than
the Godfather of British R&B — and, accordingly, R&B From The Marquee, recorded in June 1962, may be considered
the first proper R&B album to appear in UK territory. And even if it was not
— diligent research, which I do not have time to conduct, always shows that
there was always a bunch of no-names before the first big name, and a bunch
of less-than-no-names before the first significant no-name — even if it was
not, it was certainly the first influential record of its kind, symbolically opening
the floodgates for the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, the Animals, and all of
their younger brethren. |
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Actually, «Blues Incorporated» was not even a proper
band — indeed, it was more like a flexible «corporation» of the blues, with
people attracted to (and then usually repulsed from) its only permanent
member, guitar player Alexis Korner, in free-flow mode. (A similar model,
albeit with a larger amount of discipline and stricter demands for quality,
would later be adopted by John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers). Occasional members of
the conglomeration in its early, «classic» days included just about every
future member of the classic Stones line-up, as well as Jack Bruce, Ginger
Baker, Paul Jones, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page... — Alexis had a fairly good eye
for talent, in recompense for a relative lack of his own. Unfortunately, at the time when the ensemble finally
got a chance to put its sound on record (the title, by the way, is somewhat
misleading — the sound did indeed stem «from the Marquee», where B.I.
functioned on a regular basis, but the actual recordings were produced in one
of London’s Decca studios), most of the future big stars were unavailable.
The only «grand name» given credit here is sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith,
one of Britain’s finest horn blowers of all time, who would later go on to
play with the Graham Bond Organization, the Bluesbreakers, and Colosseum;
bass, drums, and keyboards are credited to relatively little known
individuals (Teddy Wadmore, Graham Burbidge, and Keith Scott, respectively;
some of them at least were also parallel members of Chris Barber’s Jazz
Band). Korner’s major partner at the time was singer and
harmonica player Cyril Davies, another important figure in the British
R&B movement, but by mid-1962, the two were already drifting apart, and
this would be the first and last B.I. record featuring Cyril’s vocal talent
(not particularly impressive anyway) — alternating, on a few tracks, with
the throatier, croakier delivery of Long John Baldry (Davies would later go
on to form the «Cyril Davies All-Stars» and then die just two years later
from either endocarditis or leukemia). The setlist, as can easily be seen from the song
titles, largely consists of Chicago blues numbers, mainly Muddy Waters,
spiced up with a little Jimmy Witherspoon and Leroy Carr; about half of the
songs, though, are «originals», i. e. variations on the same Chicago styles
and patterns, credited to Korner, Davies, or (in one case) Long John Baldry.
The band had a «purist» attitude at the time, focusing exclusively on slow
12-bar blues or mid-tempo jump blues, not even any Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley
allowed (one may amusingly remember how Mick Jagger, in the earliest days of
the Stones, was appalled and abhorred at the prospect of the Stones being
called a «rock’n’roll band»); this attitude would eventually pass, but not
before driving a wedge between the more conservative Davies and the more
easily adaptable Korner — and, fortunately for them, not before they released
this LP, for all the world to marvel at their trans-Atlantic interpretations
of ʽI Got My Mojo
Workingʼ and ʽHoochie Coochie Manʼ. Frankly speaking, there is very little to marvel at.
The lack of proper amplification (Korner confines himself to acoustic
guitar) may be a minus, but not as big a minus as the very fact that this
whole thing is, at best, merely «competent» — everybody does his best to
imitate the respective player in Muddy’s band, but that is just what it is: a
faithful imitation, bound to pale against the original when the players
intentionally withdraw from offering anything of their own. Even Dick Heckstall-Smith,
who would go on to much higher heights, is perfectly content here with the
status of a bit player — his sax leads on ʽSpooky But Niceʼ, ʽDown Townʼ, and other
instrumentals are fun, but do not stand any serious competition against
America’s «monster tradition». Seriously,
most of these instrumentals sound no better and no worse than your average professional
blues band inobtrusively entertaining you at your local bar’n’grill. If anything, it is quite instructive to take one
listen to this stuff, if only to see how much of a jump forward the British
R&B movement went through in two years’ time, and gain an additional appreciation
for something like the Rolling Stones’ debut — everything is always better
understood, and sometimes stronger liked, in its context. Nevertheless, in
its defense, even with all of its blandness, R&B From The Marquee never feels «fake»: all of these people
were clearly united by a genuine love for this sort of music, a basic
understanding of how it works, and an honest desire to share this love with
the listeners. In a way, it is not their fault that the impact of this album
had been reduced to naught within a couple of years — every giant leap is
naturally preceded by a small step, and this might just have been the small
step without which there would be no giant leap. Without Blues Incorporated,
there might truly have been no Rolling Stones — and that, to me, is already
reason enough for a perfectly rational, if not altogether «emotional», endorsement. |
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Album
released: June 1964 |
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Tracks: 1) Woke Up This Morning; 2)
Skipping; 3) Herbie’s Tune; 4) Stormy Monday; 5) It’s Happening; 6) Roberta;
7) Jones; 8) Cabbage Greens; 9) Chicken Shack; 10) Haitian Fight Song. |
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REVIEW
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Unfortunately,
professionalism seems to be the key goal of this relatively tepid studio
release, which has neither the energy nor the risky exuberance of Korner’s
live shows. This attitude was, of course, consistent with the then-current
practice of putting on a polite and gallant face in the studio while leaving
all the stop-pulling business for the live environment — putting tightness,
discipline, and cleanliness of sound at the forefront, all of which seems
quite logical to observe when a good studio actually allows you to practice
all these values, unlike the live setting. That
said, a tight, clean, and well-disciplined Blues Incorporated at best comes
across as a respectable backing band for some high profile jump blues artist
like, say, Louis Jordan. In particular, check ʽSkippingʼ, a tightly
played piece of fast-paced R&B in which Ron Edgeworth’s organ, Korner’s electric
guitar, and the three sax players form five near-ideal pieces of the puzzle,
yet fail to complete the experience with the secret special ingredient — because
not one of the players is ever ready to let his basic instincts take over, as
if feeling afraid that something will fatally fall out of place. At one time
during the groove, Korner takes the lead, but plays it feebly and
falteringly, without any signs of imaginativeness or wildness, and it looks
as if he does not even try, being subconsciously terrified of ending up
looking stupid or something. It is precisely this aspect, I think, that separates
Alexis from the likes of Keith Richards, even if some of the allegedly «red
hot» licks he plays here are formally reminiscent of Keith’s «anglicized»
Chuck Berry style. Likewise,
the short version of the instrumental ʽHerbie’s Tuneʼ (ironically
titled, since it is one of the few numbers on which Herbie does not sing) is all «academic», slow, and
stiff compared to what they did to the composition on stage — where the saxophones would screech and whine like an agonizing pig
under the knife, while here the pig in question is more prone to lazily grunting
and snorting in the comfort of the trough. This lack of excitement
essentially nullifies the fact that the sound mix is unquestionably better, with
all the different instrumental parts well defined and working as clearly
individual parts of a collective whole, and that Edgeworth’s organ does add one
more layer of depth that was lacking at The Cavern; none of that matters,
because on the whole, the tune just creeps and crawls on, slowly and
painfully, on the formalistic strength of its metronomically rising and falling
groove, without any involving dynamics. Stylistically,
the album is mostly divided between 12-bar blues (T-Bone Walker’s classic ʽStormy Mondayʼ, a major favorite of all UK blues-based bands; Korner delivers a
shrill, echoey, stinging guitar solo, fairly decent and expressive for the
pre-Clapton era) and, in a relatively surprising new twist, classic jazz (covers
of Duke Ellington’s ‘Jones’ and of ‘Chicken Shack’ credited to Johnny Smith —
can’t really identify the original; the Graham Bond original ʽIt’s Happeningʼ). The latter artistic decision seems rather unfortunate to me,
because this particular incarnation of Korner’s band is simply too
heavy-footed to get a proper jazz groove going on — listen to Duke’s band
performing ‘Jones’ on any of his live or studio records, almost literally
flying above the ground; Blues Incorporated, in comparison, tread upon the
ground heavily, with the rhythm section almost jackhammering the tune under
the soil. The only time they succeed with their jazz ambitions is with the
cover of Mingus’ classic ‘Haitian Fight Song’ (from The Clown), given that it is
a dark and menacing groove which needs to be trampled underfoot, and Korner’s
little band of sax players forms a convincing cutthroat outfit with the
rhythm section. Everything else here needed to be delivered with smiles on
faces and helium in the lungs, when in reality we get morose seriousness and a
solid dose of lead poisoning. Apparently,
Korner had also become seriously infatuated with the sound of Booker T. &
The MG’s, ripping off ʽGreen Onionsʼ on his poorly masked ʽCabbage Greensʼ — formally, he gets the groove right, but then he goes on to transpose
it to a different tonality which completely removes the foreboding, devilish
menace of the original (precisely
the element that made it so unforgettable and popular) and basically just
relieves it of any emotional impact. Just compare the organ riff from the
original and whatever Edgeworth is doing here — the former makes you hug the
sidewalk and dive into a side alley, while the latter might make a nice
relaxing soundtrack for a tanning session at the beach. Still,
even if Red Hot From Alex should
rather read Stone Cold From Alex, I
admit that there may well be people to whom this academically sterile take on
rhythm & blues will be far more palatable than dirty, sloppy, emotionally
charged garage rock. On an objective scale, the album does have the
distinction of being the first well-produced, clear-sounding record to come
out of Alexis Korner’s camp (London’s Olympic Studios did deliver easily the best produced pop music of the
time), sort of like Manfred Mann without the irritating nursery pop ditties —
a serious, but fully accessible mix of blues, jazz, and dance music whose
only fault was in that nobody in the whole wide world really needed this kind of music from Britain at the
time, not even Britain itself. Even if he wanted to (which he allegedly did not),
Alexis Korner could never become part of the «British Invasion» — his entire
schtick was strictly for internal consumption, and even then, only as long as
the US import market still remained relatively underdeveloped. Only in a long-term
retro perspective is it possible to see that the artist was honestly trying
to reinterpret his influences rather than simply copycat them — unfortunately,
his talent was simply not enough to make this effort work. |
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Album
released: October 1964 |
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Tracks: 1) Overdrive; 2) Whoa Babe; 3)
Every Day I Have The Blues; 4) Hoochie Coochie Man; 5) Herbie’s Tune; 6)
Little Bitty Gal Blues; 7) Well All Right, OK You Win; 8) Kansas City. |
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REVIEW With
Beatlemania already in full swing and the British rhythm’n’blues scene
already being populated by newcoming scruffy young ruffians, this record
already has less historical significance than R&B At The Marquee — yet it is also a genuinely superior recording.
First, unlike the «Marquee» sessions, this one was actually recorded live
(February 23, 1964, at The Cavern in Liverpool, a place already made famous throughout
the country by the magic of the Beatles’ touch): consequently, it catches
Korner’s backing band in a more adventurous state of mind, as their purpose
is no longer limited to just introducing their influences, but also includes
— at least, to some degree — the desire to transform those influences. |
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Second,
with several years of experience behind their backs, Blues Incorporated were
almost beginning to develop some sort of personal identity — very important
in an era of swiftly increasing competition, even though it was still never
enough to make Korner into a superstar (not that he ever entertained any such
ambitions). Clearly, they were listening not only to «mass appeal» records
from the Chicago blues scene, but to various strains of jazz as well, trying
to mix both types of influences in their live act (before this mix reached a
culmination of sorts in the studio, with Red
Hot From Alex, though Korner would never demonstrate the same kind of
energy in the studio). This
particular line-up, other than Korner himself, included Dave Castle (replacing
Dick Heckstall-Smith) on saxophone; Malcom Saul on organ; Vernon Bown on
bass; Mike Scott on drums; and Herbie Goins on vocals, although Alexis
himself takes the lead on the first few tracks (allegedly, he abhorred his
own singing voice and only sang out of necessity — which is understandable,
since he has a raspy croak which, at best, comes across as «funny»; that
said, mood-wise Korner’s vocals agree well enough with the band’s arrangements,
and I would still take them over, say, Jimmy Reed at least, to name at least
one example of an even less impressive singer from across the Atlantic). Of
all these people, Dave Castle is the loudest, and his sax frequently tends to
outshout the vocalist (ʽEveryday I Have
The Bluesʼ is a
particularly illustrative example: no sooner does Alexis introduce Herbie
Goins to the Cavern audiences as «someone who can
sing» than the frenetic blasts from Dave’s instrument threaten
to prevent us, the listeners — let alone
the actual audience at the club — from assessing that statement). Some find
this a problem, but not me: the noisy ambience generated by Dave’s ruckus is
intermittently irritating... and curious
— certainly B. B. King and his band would never have dreamed of performing
the song that way. The
lengthy instrumental ʽHerbie’s Tuneʼ, ironically named after the band’s only member who
does not perform on it, is quite solid here and a major improvement on the
shorter and more tepid studio recording. Here, it is still a carefully
constructed workout in 12/4, but with both Castle and Saul taking their time
to improvise and Mike Scott turning in the obligatory drum solo, probably
making this the earliest «jazz-style rock instrumental» in the history of
British rhythm & blues, and a pretty good one. Everything gels, even if
the main theme, with its rather monotonous rise-and-fall pattern, is hardly
on par with Charles Mingus, whose influence is very sharply felt here. Alexis
throws in a few of his own compositions, introducing ʽWhoa Babeʼ as a «John Lee Hooker type blues» — although,
let’s face it, John Lee Hooker would probably not care about such show-off-ey
saxophone exuberance on his records, and the song’s rhythm, mood, and
stinging slide guitar leads are more suggestive of Muddy Waters anyway. (Maybe
«John Lee Hooker» just has a better onstage ring to it than «Muddy Waters», I
wouldn’t know.) The other one is given the ambitious title of ʽOverdriveʼ — although, frankly, the only performer to remain in overdrive during
the song, and throughout the entire album as well, is Dave Castle, to the
extent that they should have honestly credited the LP to «Dave Castle’s Blues
Incorporated». Castle even manages to dominate on ʽHoochie Coochie Manʼ, despite Alexis’ trying at one point to revert attention to himself
by playing a stinging slide guitar solo (for about a couple of bars, that is,
before the organ and sax drown it out once and for all). Sometimes
it hurts, sometimes it helps, but in the end, it is the brass component which
gives At The Cavern its distinct
flavor, if we so desperately need to extract it. The UK already had its fair
share of competent sax blowers by 1964, yet, for the most part, they were
either bit players of relatively little significance (e. g. Mike Vickers of
Manfred Mann) or played within a strict pop configuration (Mike Smith of the
Dave Clark 5). The major exception was Dick Heckstall-Smith, a jazz player
open to different formats; but if you ask me, Dave Castle does just fine a
job in his steps (on Red Hot From Alex,
they would be working in tandem). As for Herbie Goins, Korner certainly does
not lie with the "somebody who can sing" introduction, but I am
afraid that is pretty much all that could be said about Herbie Goins — The
Man Who Could Sing (When Nobody Else Could). One
minor complaint which simply has to
be voiced, though, concerns Korner’s style of stage banter: he does these
«dark», «theatrical» announcements from stage, drawing out and rolling around
his syllables as if channeling some traditional vaudeville show, and it comes
across as a strained and comical mannerism rather than a serious premonition.
"At which juncture we’d like to carry on with a John Lee Hooker type
blu-u-u-u-ues..." "...this one’s an old Joe Turner number called...
Littl-l-l-le Bitt-e-e-e-e Ga-a-a-al Blu-u-ues..." and so on. Maybe the
idea is that this style of presentation is somehow «authentic», but I would
rather take the natural, un-affected, and even slightly scared stage
announcements from Five Live Yardbirds
than this kind of pseudo-professionalism. It is, after all, not an absolute
requirement that the Godfather of British R&B should be addressing people
from stage with a Godfather accent. For
the sake of trivia, there exists an expanded reissue of the album (on Castle
Records, from 2006) which includes an additional six tracks recorded live for
the BBC that same year — including covers of ʽTurn On Your Lovelightʼ and ʽPlease, Please, Pleaseʼ, demonstrating that Korner was quite heavily getting into soul-based
R&B at that time, adding to and transcending his passion for Chicago
blues and Mingusian jazz. Although, to be fair, it is probably not a big sin
if you go to your grave without that knowledge. |
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Album
released: June 1965 |
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Tracks: 1) Blue Mink; 2) Rainy Tuesday; 3)
Yogi; 4) Sappho; 5) Navy Blue; 6) Royal Dooji; 7) Preachin’ The Blues; 8)
Captain’s Tiger; 9) Little Bit Groovy; 10) Anything For Now; 11) Chris
Trundle’s Habit; 12) Trundlin’. |
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REVIEW The
release date for this album is wildly deceptive. Since it is completely
instrumental, and since all of the tunes are more «jazz» than «blues», the
easiest thing in the world would be to surmise — as I originally did, before
remembering to at least consult the liner notes — that the recordings reflect
the eventual «maturation» of Korner’s sound, as he and his sidemen, spurred
on by the rapidly evolving musical scene around them, steadily recede from
their role of «blues influencers» and try on ever more daring and
experimental ways of advancing and expanding musical patterns. Actually, the
first paragraph of those liner notes, written by Charles Fox, would be
consistent with this scenario — he talks about the various stereotypes about
jazz and blues music, then goes on to admire Korner for generating an innovative
synthesis of the two. |
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At
this point, however, the notes mention that all of the recordings were made
as early as in the summer of 1963 (May, to be more precise), meaning even before the Herbie Goins era rather
than after it. Why Decca’s
sub-label, Ace Of Clubs, charged with the distribution of Blues Incorporated,
would not release this material in 1963 may be understood; why it suddenly
decided to make it public two years later is not nearly as clear — but I
could not exclude that, perhaps, somebody out there thought that the time has
truly come to unleash that sound. After all, The Graham Bond Organisation,
featuring several of Alexis’ old alumni, had just made a name (if not a
fortune) for themselves with The Sound
Of ’65, on which they experimented with a fusion of jazz and blues not
unlike the one offered here. (Incidentally, the CD edition of the album
throws on, as a bonus track, a rudimentary instrumental rendition of ‘Early
In The Morning’, which would later become one of the major highlights on The Sound Of ’65). In
any case, all of the music on this album was indeed recorded in mid-’63 and,
for that period of time, was in general far more adventurous than the average
live set of Blues Incorporated, with all of its ‘Hoochie Coochie Men’ and ‘Stormy
Monday Blues’. Featuring Korner on guitar, Heckstall-Smith and Art Themen on
saxophones, Johnny Parker on piano, Mike Scott on bass (not drums, for which he is credited on the At The Cavern record!), and Phil Seamen on drums (one of the most
prolific UK jazz drummers of the 1950s and 1960s), the record is perhaps best
described as a «jazz album with a blues underbelly»... hmm, or should that be
the other way around? Anyway, I’ve got some good news and some bad news here.
The good news is that the recording session does not sound anything like a stereotypical «British
rhythm’n’blues» get-together — if, like myself, you have grown up with the
faint historical knowledge of Blues Incorporated as the forefather platform
for the Rolling Stones, this half hour-long document will blow your mind on
that count. The bad news, unfortunately, is that this album... kind of blows,
period. Almost
from the opening, slowly and cautiously descending chords of ‘Blue Mink’
(written by Korner himself, I assume, as are most of the tracks on the
record), it is clear that these guys are looking for ways to push music
forward — yet doing this in such a self-conscious, «academic» manner that
they are simultaneously losing ways
to make that music exciting. I am fairly sure that ‘Blue Mink’ is supposed to
be a pun on Thelonious Monk’ ‘Blue Monk’ (what else could it be?), even if
the two compositions have little else in common. But the genius of Thelonious
was not in challenging established conventions on how to play the jazz piano;
it was in convincing us that it was actually the most natural and fun thing
in the world to do to challenge them. These guys, on the contrary, seem to
lay down each single note with the hard-working earnestness of a beginning
ballet dancer who comes to classes equipped with measuring tape and a divider
compass. It
is a curious composition, by all
means, primarily because it defies genre classification, veering between
blues, jazz, and R&B chords, tempos, and instrumentation. But almost
everybody involved «veers» with learned, practiced caution, slowly and
patiently, as if inviting all of us to form a dance line and exploit it in
the same cautious, dignified, one-two-three one-two-three fashion. I think
that Heckstall-Smith is the only person involved here to allow himself some
genuinely wild spontaneity, and since I’ve never been the greatest admirer of
his musical personality, this isn’t a particularly exciting revelation. As
you can easily predict, ‘Blue Mink’ sets the tone for the entire record —
most of the other tracks continue in the same genre-blurring, intellectual,
experimental, and basically boring manner. The
«hard bop» of people like Monk, (early) Coltrane, Art Blakey, and others does
seem to be the defining influence here, particularly seeing as how «hard bop»
is often defined by its openness to the musical ideas of other genres,
including blues and R&B. In accordance with the pattern, Korner’s
compositions usually feature a main theme (typically horn-driven, though
occasionally the guitar or the piano may come in as lead instruments),
followed by a minute or two of improvisation and then resolving back to the
main theme. Most of the improvisation feels stilted and devoid of
inspiration; the main themes can sometimes be fun (like the fast-tempo brass
riff of ‘Sappho’) and sometimes utterly generic (‘Anything For Now’), but not
a single one delivers a suspenseful thrill like, say, Coltrane’s ‘Blue Train’
or Art Blakey’s ‘Moanin’, to name just a few possible sources of inspiration
for these guys. One
number that is instantly recognizable is ‘Royal Dooji’, merely a different
name for what we have already heard on two other Korner records as ‘Herbie’s
Tune’. (For those not in the know, dooji
— also spelled as duji, doogie, etc. — is the original African-American
slang for heroin, and was first immortalized as such by Duke Ellington with
his ‘Old King Dooji’ in 1938, back when nobody at Brunswick cared enough to
ask him what that actually means). Unfortunately, it is not an inch more
exciting than the studio version on Red
Hot From Alex (if you want to experience at least a little bit of passion
from these guys, go back to the extended live performance on At The Cavern), even if, strangely
enough, it feels a little more polished in terms of production. Actually,
the only number on here that makes my curiosity genuinely perk up is the
repetitive two-minute mantra of ‘Preachin’ The Blues’, on which the boys
really try to churn up the atmosphere of a tribal ritual. Seamen rolls out
the tom-toms, Korner joins him on country-blues slide guitar, and then the
two sax players take up their positions on the left and the right and start
playing the same melody, but ever so slightly dissonantly, intentionally
fuckin’ up tempos and tonalities so that the whole thing might feel
cacophonic and ugly one second, then tight and harmonious the next, much the
same way, I guess, as it might happen at a real African ceremony. It’s the
closest that the band gets to genuinely «wild» on here, exchanging their
strict Apollonian discipline for something a bit more Dionysian — but it’s
just two minutes out of thirty, and feels more like a cautious tease than an
invitation to a different dimension. The very next number, ‘Captain’s Tiger’,
brings us back to controlled sanity with its strictly mannered «dark waltz»
attitude that, once again, feels like the soundtrack to a lesson in modern
dance. Doubtlessly,
there is some historical importance to these sessions — if the live shows of
Blues Incorporated pointed the way to the genesis of the British
rhythm’n’blues scene, then these
particular exercises ultimately laid down the foundation for the almost
equally rich (though far less popular) British movement of jazz-rock, fusion,
and avantgarde. Distant echoes of everything from Cream to the Soft Machine
and Colosseum can be found here if you really
put your ear down to the ground and all that; and it does throw in yet
another layer of respect for Alexis Korner, the man who truly loved both
traditional and modern music despite being unable to put his own stamp on it.
But even that influence is very indirect — it is not so much the recorded
music itself that provides the influence, more the very fact that people in the UK were trying to make this kind of sound
as early as 1963. And, other than brushing up on your history, there is
really little other reason to listen to it today if you can just go straight
ahead to all those hard bop masterpieces instead. The
2006 CD edition of the album on Castle Music does a nice job by throwing on a
bunch of vocal tracks, recorded
around the same time — including a rather lengthy cover of ‘Night Time Is The
Right Time’, replete with a maniacal sax solo and some additional verses you
don’t get to hear on regular Ray Charles versions; and a mildly interesting «bluesier»
arrangement of ‘Taboo Man’, a poorly known 1962 single from a poorly
remembered R&B singer, Eugene Church (the original version
is quite a bit more «poppy» than the Blues Incorporated rendition). On the
other hand, ‘Rockin’ is more like ‘Jump-Bluesing’, ‘See See Rider’ is a mess
of brass, and ‘Blues A La King’ never specifies which particular King it is going after — Albert, Freddie, or B. B.?
— making things complicated for us because the instrumental does not really
sound much like any of the three. Well, there’s lotsa brass on it, so
probably B. B. Whatever. |
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