This is the Blues- Volume 3 (w/videos)

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This is the Blues- Volume 3
February 7, 2011
Alt Sounds

Eagle Records have assembled various teams of blues musicians, to get them playing together and covering blues songs by other blues musicians. It’s a neat idea, so please don’t think this is just another one of umpty-umpth blues compilations that are seemingly released every few months or so.

We start off this third volume with the nubile, pulsing John Lee Hooker tune “Crawlin’ King Snake”, as acoustic strumming and old-time country harmonica - both handled by Peter Green - build into a hypnotizing framework that manages to wrap around his burning vocals. The track features discreet accompaniment by members of the Peter Green Splinter Group, including Roger Cotton and Nigel Watson on guitars, and Pete Stroud on upright bass. Green’s rough near-whisper, an intoxicating whiskey-hushed sound, threatens those who come near his love possession, the object of his affection: ‘you know I’m a crawlin’ king snake baby, and I rules my den / I don’t want you hangin’ around my mate, wanna use her for myself’.

It’s a slow but measured start to this entry in the series, but not for long: the frothing excitement on “If You Be My Baby” is obvious to all and sunder. Foghat’s Dave Peverett and Rod Price are backed by Harvey Brooks on bass, drumming from Mo Potts and Southside Johnny’s harmonica work. It’s the first of six pieces that have been written by Green (not including the first track, which he only shows up on), with each of these four discs typically including around the same number from the man who was once voted the third-best guitarist of all time in Mojo magazine in 1996. Track 3, John Lee Hooker’s “Bad like Jesse James” has a dirty mellowed-out groove care of LLC. Hooker once said that ‘the blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning’.

This seven minute lament is about trusting the wrong man: ‘I taken the cat in, got him a place to stay / and I found out he’s goin’ around town / tellin’ everybody that he got my wife’. Like a scene from Deadwood, revenge is all that’s on this man’s mind. He gleefully sings ‘I’m gonna warn you just one time / next time I warn you, I’m gonna use my gun / because I’m mad, I’m bad, like Jesse James’, before his lust for suffering accelerates and he talks of employing some guys to do his dirty work for him, that ‘they may shoot you, they may cut you / they may drown you, I just don’t know / I don’t care, long as they take care of you / in their on way’. Genuine murderous intent or an imagined payback daydream sparked by a tragic unrequited love? That’s the blues for you. The original Hooker version can be heard here:

Eagle Records have assembled various teams of blues musicians, to get them playing together and covering blues songs by other blues musicians. It’s a neat idea, so please don’t think this is just another one of umpty-umpth blues compilations that are seemingly released every few months or so.

We start off this third volume with the nubile, pulsing John Lee Hooker tune “Crawlin’ King Snake”, as acoustic strumming and old-time country harmonica - both handled by Peter Green - build into a hypnotizing framework that manages to wrap around his burning vocals. The track features discreet accompaniment by members of the Peter Green Splinter Group, including Roger Cotton and Nigel Watson on guitars, and Pete Stroud on upright bass. Green’s rough near-whisper, an intoxicating whiskey-hushed sound, threatens those who come near his love possession, the object of his affection: ‘you know I’m a crawlin’ king snake baby, and I rules my den / I don’t want you hangin’ around my mate, wanna use her for myself’.

It’s a slow but measured start to this entry in the series, but not for long: the frothing excitement on “If You Be My Baby” is obvious to all and sunder. Foghat’s Dave Peverett and Rod Price are backed by Harvey Brooks on bass, drumming from Mo Potts and Southside Johnny’s harmonica work. It’s the first of six pieces that have been written by Green (not including the first track, which he only shows up on), with each of these four discs typically including around the same number from the man who was once voted the third-best guitarist of all time in Mojo magazine in 1996. Track 3, John Lee Hooker’s “Bad like Jesse James” has a dirty mellowed-out groove care of LLC. Hooker once said that ‘the blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning’.


This seven minute lament is about trusting the wrong man: ‘I taken the cat in, got him a place to stay / and I found out he’s goin’ around town / tellin’ everybody that he got my wife’. Like a scene from Deadwood, revenge is all that’s on this man’s mind. He gleefully sings ‘I’m gonna warn you just one time / next time I warn you, I’m gonna use my gun / because I’m mad, I’m bad, like Jesse James’, before his lust for suffering accelerates and he talks of employing some guys to do his dirty work for him, that ‘they may shoot you, they may cut you / they may drown you, I just don’t know / I don’t care, long as they take care of you / in their on way’. Genuine murderous intent or an imagined payback daydream sparked by a tragic unrequited love? That’s the blues for you. The original Hooker version can be heard here:

The old Ray Charles blues standard “I’ve Got News for You” has an infectious dissecting guitar track throughout, that cuts through like a scalpel. Mick Abrahams, the original guitarist for Jethro Tull, injects an infectious jauntiness to “The Same Way”, with Jim Leverton on 4-string, Graham Walker on beat duties, and Dave Lennox on keyboards. The late, great Irish guitarist Gary Moore injects a vocal so fraught with emotion that it sounds like a genuine cathartic release, in his reading of John Lee Hooker’s “Serves Me Right to Suffer”.



His lead guitar writhes up against the colossal, dramatic bassline provided by Jack Bruce (from 60’s supergroup Cream), which is sequenced next to the oddly upbeat “Little Wheel”. This odd contrast, between haunted feelings of loss and grief and then an easygoing, almost rockabilly sort of shuffle, is jarring to say the least. However the track itself is a pleasant, swinging jig featuring a lithe, living-for-the-moment vocal from Gary Brooker (vocalist, pianist and founder member of Procol Harum). It’s a performance that’s rigged with pepper-shaker percussion and complimented by Andy Fairweather-Low’s minimal guitar licks. James Cotton’s “One More Mile” is delivered via Lou Martin’s tinkling ivories and Mick Clarke’s genuflecting vocals and earnest guitar fills. The beautiful original version can be heard here:



Peter Green’s “The Supernatural” is an electric fix of murky swamp blues infused with an impudent guitar solo that thrashes and squirms, from Swedish axe-man Clas Yngstrom and bandmates, Christer Bjorklund, Ulf Ivarsson and Frank Marstokk (on drums, bass and percussion respectively). The fact that a track penned by a white British man and performed by Nordic musicians shows how far the blues has come, and totally confronts Ma Rainey, known as ‘The Mother of the Blues’, who once said that ‘white folks hear the blues come out, but they don’t know how it got there’. Rainey was one of the earliest known American blues singers to be professionally recorded, and subsequently featured on over 100 different records, so she knew what she was talking about. However, flash forward a few decades and it now seems that, no matter your colour or race, everyone has good and bad days, and everyone can have the blues. It’s innate in us all. It’s just that some have it worse than others, and some have the key to unlocking it in the studio, sometimes with heartbreaking effects: Eric Clapton, talking about what he called ‘the bible of the blues’, described the musical genre as ‘a very powerful drug… I absorbed it totally, and it changed my complete outlook on music’.

Piano and vocals both supplied by Ken Hensley on the epic Robert Johnson cut “Hellhound on my Trail” are mournful, as the lyrics ‘I got to keep moving, I got to keep moving / there’s a hellhound on my trail’ paint a picture of a grief-ridden man in pain, always on the run and never at peace. It’s a track pregnant with energetic phrasing, and intertwined with melancholic slide guitar backing. The track “Fleetwood Mac” has heavy metal qualities to its intro, with Larry Mitchell’s hair metal riffing and Stu Hamm’s stop-start bass rumblings seamlessly running alongside the fiercely full-throttle drumming by Graham Walker. The Peter Green number “Showbiz Blues”, a piece detailing his devastating mistrust of the music business and its shady and exploitative backroom dealings, is given a wryness by Rory Gallagher, whose slide and rhythm guitar parts sounding akin to “Street Fighting Man” at times:

Spooky Tooth guitarist Luther Grosvenor and fellow band member Mike Kellie (on drums) give the slow blues staple “Merry Go Round” an aching sense of torment, with Jess Roden’s supple vocals laced with a soulful edge. The traditional gospel song “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” sees Jeff Beck’s guitar gliding alongside Siggi Josiah’s salubrious vocal. Mahalia Jackson once stated that ‘blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope’ and, flanked by the powerful presence of the Kingdom Choir, it’s a nicely upbeat ending to this highly rewarding third compilation. Blues guitarist and singer Albert Collins said that ‘simple music is the hardest music to play, and the blues is simple music’. The tracks here could be described as simple, and yet, they’re also complex and lavish affairs at the same time. It’s a beguiling paradox. Such is the blues.

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