Review of ‘Chicago Blues: A Living History – The (R)evolution Continues’

Right off the bat, I should admit I don’t really know anything at all about the blues. I’ve spent some time with blues music at various points in my life – mostly in New Orleans, a little bit when I lived in New York. But the history of the blues is something about which I know very little.

I’ve been to Memphis once or twice, but that’s about it. 

The first time I met the blues, I was walking down through the woods 

The first time I met the blues, I was walking down through the woods

You know the blues got after me

And I’m here to tell you it didn’t do me no good

The blues got after me, and you know they ran me from tree to tree

The blues got after me, and you know they ran me from tree to tree

You shoulda heard me beggin’

Oh, blues don’t you murder me. 

You can’t argue with that. Just as you can’t argue with the insistent pounding of the keys before they fall off that high cliff and come plunging down through arpeggios. There’s something about those rhythm guitar parts, too, with their redundant, syncopated four-note melodies, which groove you straight into some kind of almost meditation. It’s a kind of hypnotism, until you get it through your thick skull. There are two things you can do when you get the blues: give up, or make music. 

You treated me so filthy

Now I’m just trying to worry you off my mind

Last week, I received a download of this forthcoming release from Raisin Music. It’s dropping officially on June 7, but seems much better suited to these rainy spring days, when the pollen is all aflutter and the clouds are thick and grey. 

This is the second in the Chicago Blues: A Living History series, and is a two-disc set featuring some of the very best of Chicago bluesmen all together in the studio – Billy Boy Arnold, John Primer, Billy Branch, Lurrie Bell, Carlos Johnson, Buddy Guy, James Cotton, Magic Slim, and more. There’s older-timey blues here, and newer rock and roll blues, which spanks of filthy funk. It plays like a natural progression through blues music history, with all its radical leanings – from “Stockyard Blues” to “Be Careful How You Vote.” There are love songs – “She Don’t Love Me That Way,” “Don’t Take Advantage of Me” – and plenty of songs about being broke and broken hearted.

But, mostly, the record is a self-conscious history of its own players (not surprising, given the title). This is presumably intended to be a musical history of the city of Chicago, and you can almost feel the wind whipping off the water between the licks of “Somebody Loan Me a Dime,” and in the girtty, grizzly, bitter aggravation of “Got to Leave Chi-Town,” with its train-whistle harmonica solos beckoning and taunting against the lyrics. (There goes another train. You’re still stuck here in the windy, singing out your poor heart.)

It’s enough to near-convert a fiddle tunes kinda girl. I’d recommend picking it up, come June 7.