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ABOUT THEM SHOES
(Tone-Cool)
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Herbert Sumlin, who’s famed for his work as blues legend Howlin’ Wolf’s guitar foil, has made dozens of albums since his great employer’s death, in 1976. Nonetheless, this sounds like a comeback — not only because he’s regained his strength and his guitar invention in recent years, but because these sessions reunite him with an ensemble sound and a cast of players lifted right from the golden era of Chess Records. A tribute to another of Sumlin’s bandleaders, Muddy Waters, the disc plucks most of its songs from his book. Guest stars Eric Clapton and Keith Richards play with spare perfection. Clapton’s tone and licks are exquisite on "I’m Ready" and "Long Distance Call," and he sings with just enough sandpaper and attitude. Richards and Sumlin have a laid-back rapport in their playing that makes "Still a Fool" and "Little Girl, This Is the End" intimate commiserations on heartache. Add Chess and Waters band veterans Paul Oscher, Bob Margolin, and James Cotton and the Band drummer Levon Helm and it’s no wonder the songs sound plucked from a 40-year-old time capsule packed back in the day when Sumlin was the inventor of the dizzy, zinging riffs that propelled Wolf classics like "Shake for Me" and "Killing Floor." He might not be minting new guitar ideas that way anymore, but he’s playing in his influential, slippery vibrato-stoked style — despite a serious heart attack and losing a lung to cancer — like a cranked-up youngster out to make his mark. Which in blues is already beyond indelible.
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