LONNIE BROOKSSWAMP CRAWLER
Lonnie Brooks is a minor star in a minor genre, the blues. This is a quick and dirty collection culled from two favorite albums (Hot Shot and Roadhouse Rules), and filled out with four tracks from the Alligator Records compilation called Deluxe Edition. It isn't intended as a complete view of the man's work, but it does give you a good idea of how he sounds.
He was born Lee Baker Jr. in Louisiana and began his career playing zydeco music in Clifton Chenier's band under the name Guitar Junior. After moving to Chicago in 1959, he found that there was already another Guitar Jr. in town and changed his name to Lonnie Brooks. The next decade was a struggle but like many American jazz & blues artists, Lonnie finally found an appreciative audience in Europe. His career began to pick up steam in the mid-Seventies and reached a crescendo in 1979 with the album "Bayou Lightning'. Being a blues star is a hollow victory, you're still only pulling in about 200 people a night in a dive on the dark end of the street.
This collection features songs from 1983 to 1996. It has similarities to the Midwest boogie blues/rock that's been posted here recently, but leans more towards the slow soul grinds of Memphis and the South.
RIYL:
Luther Allison, Son Seals, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown
5 comments:
Pleeeease... stop this series. Too mutch black music in segue. ;)
It's called "Black Music Month". It'll last a month (june).
Great call on Lonnie Brooks, but I have to admit I have a love/hate affair with Alligator label artists. Love because I generally like Chicago blues; hate because of the way Bruce Iglauer has marketed that label and its artists...aimed squarely at middle class suburban white people and their bland, safe tastes.
Too bad IMO, because the Alligator label boasts great artists and is the home of great, great music (Hound Dog Taylor to the fore). But hey, it's a business, and they go where the money is.
Thanks for the post.
I agree with what you say about Alligator, but feel that they are the ones that are keeping Blues alive. Yazoo and Arhoolie were crucial to saving blues in the early Sixties. They soldier on today with pre-war country blues but they don't generate any publicity. They don't put as much money into it and they don't highlight new work. Other smaller labels release raw blues but can't pay much and don't stay in business long.
I've seen several blues artists try to adapt hip-hop to their work in order to attract a black audience but it hasn't worked. I believe that suburban white people have been the primary consumers of blues since 1960. Makes sense to try to keep them on board.
I prepared a Hound Dog comp that may make an appearance here, and we can be grateful that Iglauer created Alligator in order to record Taylor.
Muchas gracias!
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