MUDDY & BUDDY - Two Albums

Warning: "Electric Mud" & "Sweet Tea" are blues albums with heavy psychedelic rock influences! If you consider yourself to be a blues purist, then I would encourage you to look elsewhere for something that will be more compatible with your musical tastes. With that disclaimer out of the way, let me invite those who are seeking something unusual--and especially those who like sixties rock music--to continue reading on.


I consider "Electric Mud" to be one of most original albums that I have ever heard. It is not a true blues album, but rather a concept album of blues with a heavy psychedelic rock influence. The idea for this album had its genesis with Marshall Chess, the son of Leonard Chess of Chess Records. Marshall Chess had just founded a new label named Cadet Concept, and this was the second album produced under the new label. When this album was recorded, Waters' career was in a slump; it had been a decade since he had a top ten hit. Marshall Chess was seeking out a new audience for Muddy Waters. The CD booklet (which is extremely well written) goes on to explain that this was one of Waters albums that "effectively revived Muddy's recording career at a time when he was in danger of becoming an elder statesman who couldn't sell to his own community and who was revered exclusively by a small coterie of collector-purists, not a large enough audience to sustain a career."


Tracks
1. I Just Want To Make Love To You
2. I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man
3. Let's Spend The Night Together
4. She's Alright 5. Mannish Boy
6. Herbert Harper's Free Press News
7. Tom Cat
8. The Same Thing



Very few artists have attempted--or succeeded in--improving the standard template for classic blues records set some 40 years ago in the golden age of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Perhaps R.L Burnside's recent heavily produced work on Fat Possum Records has come closest to adding an original slant.On his new album, Buddy Guy looks to the same source for inspiration; seven of the nine songs here are written by Fat Possum's hill-country blues roster, including T-Model Ford and Junior Kimbrough. Working with producer Dennis Herring (Counting Crows, Jars of Clay) and a small collective of Mississippi-based musicians, Guy sings with a passion that can only come from the same source as the songs. The noise generated in the studio through vintage amplifiers has a live and dangerous feel to it. The acoustic opener, "Done Got Old," does not prepare the listener for the colossal aural assault of "Baby, Please Don't Leave Me." Fading in on a percussion track, Guy's guitar hits its cat-strangling best and never looks back, while the voice sounds energized, vital, and wholly contemporary. Through the 12-minute "I Got to Try It, Girl" to the closing Guy composition "It's a Jungle Out There," Sweet Tea has all the hallmarks of a classic blues album, mixed with a twist of the new. --Rob Stewart


Tracks
1. Done Got Old
2. Baby Please Don't Leave Me
3. Look What All You Got
4. Stay All Night
5. Tramp
6. She Got The Devil In Her
7. I Gotta Try You Girl 8. Who's Been Foolin' You
9. It's A Junlge Out There

Electric Mud released in 1968 and Sweet Tea in 2001 - however both albums are Hendrix influenced and no mater a 33 year gap in between they sound as they have been recorded at the same studio. Highly recomended for hard blues lovers!!!


LINKS:

Muddy
h!!p://www.megaupload.com/?d=S0CKNRUA
Buddy
h!!p://www.megaupload.com/?d=KIE4OJHQ


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