Buddy Guy & Junior Wells

Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play the Blues

I rapped strong to the judge early this mornin’ and the judge put the cops in jail

It is great to see blues masters fighting against their genre going out of style. After years of musical partnership, there’s finally a co-credited album, and they intend to give you their full dose: Starting out with an Otis-Redding-riff (the starting track here is basically “Hard to Handle”) full of bravado and joy, the album settles into a loose, joyful blues groove with a lot of soul and rhythm. Based on a small Chicago blues combo, Wells’ takes center stage as a vocalist for the most part, and Guy’s guitar gets a bit more room to expand – this was always one of their most interesting dynamics, the fact that Wells wanted the best guitarist in the business, but saw his vocals and harp as their sound’s foundation. If you notice something about the Wells-standards here, re-recorded for the most part: “I Don’t Know”, “Messin’ with the Kid”, “My Baby Left Me (She Left Me a Mule to Ride)” … you’re correct, this is at its core the Blues Brothers-repertoire from a few years later, making this not only a period-typical but a blueprint (rhythm&)blues record for the 1970s sound-wise: soul-inflected, amiable, immediate.

And while they were paying attention to what was popular in black music, they always seemed to look at popular tastes from the other side of the fence – both Guy and Wells had their roots in deep blues (check “Come on in This House”, where Wells growls and squeals his way through a slow blues – great), and it is no coincidence that, besides paying tribute to T-Bone Walker (“T-Bone Shuffle), they end the album with two modernized boogie-piano / jump-blues classic (Bad, Bad Whiskey”) and – out of the blue – one of the classic rolling piano blues numbers (“Honeydripper”, a 1940s smash hit for Joe Liggins), which they transform into a mellow instrumental guitar-shuffle with a boogie base. The project clearly is to demonstrate the many different playable shades of blues, bridging its roots to a modern sound. Stylistically, this results in a trade-off, slightly diluting their deep blues strengths while resulting in bouncing, cool jump-soul, so to speak. Really cool, surprisingly influential as a sound-template, but not the classic you would want it to be.

Drinkin‘ TNT ’n‘ Smokin‘ Dynamite

I hate to say this, but we get a better thrill out of playin’ over here than we do at home

An all-star band led by Junior Wells and Buddy guy, with Bill Wyman and Pinetop Perkins, in the often very fiery or very loose setting that the Montreux Jazz Festival seems to offer performances. This set is of the latter kind: Very loose, so comfortable in fact that it goes a bit limp, as the band shuffles through the songs as if it were a warm-up session. Playing mostly laidback boogie pieces, Guy and Wells share vocals and solos, with Wells singing the boogie-oriented numbers, while Guy supplies jazzy riffs and takes the slow, heavy blues tracks. The latter are more successful, Guy leans into the solos and Wells seeking that low-down low-register harp sound. The only true highlight is the lengthy classic “Ten Years ago”, but of course this is far from bored professionalism (something these guys never stoop down to), but their impact is softened by the living-room atmosphere, replacing intimacy with jovial slackness.

Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play the Blues

Drinkin‘ TNT ’n‘ Smokin‘ Dynamite

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