|
|
| |
|
|
BLUES IN THE BLOOD
(Blind Pig)
|
|
|
|
|
|
If the title doesn’t make the connection between Big Bill and his papa — McKinley Morganfield, a/k/a Muddy Waters — explicit enough, there’s this disc’s dedicatedly retro sound. There’s no tune here that couldn’t have been cut before 1967, which is a virtue and a shame. What’s good is that Morganfield, who has a deep booming voice he inherited from his father, and his accomplices (they include Max Weinberg Seven guitarist Jimmy Vivino) can play the hell out of what is at heart first- and second-generation electric blues. So the ripping slide guitar in "Trapped" stings like a mean little honey bee, and the acoustic lament "Feel like Dyin’ " echoes the back-porch cry of a Delta man just moved to the big lonely city. What’s a drag is that the album’s lyrics about the urge to boogie, hootchie-kootchie girls, whiskey-drinkin’ men, and true love amount to a fistful of blues clichés that might not ring tired if this album actually had been cut before 1967. If Big Bill truly wants to show that he’s got Muddy’s blood in his veins, he needs to remember that his father was an innovator and consider expanding his sonic palette and his subject matter. I’d like to hear what this former DC-area teacher thinks about contemporary race, politics, religion — all rich fodder for the blues and too rarely explored.
|
