Smokey Wilson - Sing The Blues / With The William Clarke Band

Album: Sing The Blues
Size: 95,3 MB
Time: 40:24
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 1998
Styles: West Coast Blues
Art: Full

01. Blues For Big Town (3:33)
02. I Wonder Why Strange Things Are Happening To Me (4:29)
03. Honey Bee (4:24)
04. I Wish I Was A Sings (5:08)
05. Loudella (4:23)
06. Someone, Guess Who (5:21)
07. I'm No Fool, I Know The Blues (4:02)
08. I Want You (2:56)
09. You Shadowed My Dreams (6:03)

When Los Angeles-based guitarist Smokey Wilson really got serious about setting a full-fledged career as a bluesman in motion, it didn't take him long to astound the aficionados with an incendiary 1993 set for Bullseye Blues, Smoke n' Fire, that conjured up echoes of the Mississippi Delta of his youth. Robert Lee Wilson lived and played the blues with Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes, Big Jack Johnson, Frank Frost, and other Mississippi stalwarts before relocating to L.A. in 1970 when he was 35 years old. But instead of grabbing for the gold as a touring entity, he opened the Pioneer Club in Watts, leading the house band while the club booked the very best in blues talent (all-star attractions at the fabled joint included Joe Turner, Percy Mayfield, Pee Wee Crayton, Albert Collins, and plenty more).

Wilson recorded sparingly at first, his LPs for Big Town not doing the man justice. A 1983 set for Murray Brothers (later reissued on Blind Pig) with harpist Rod Piazza and Hollywood Fats on rhythm guitar may have been the turning point; clearly, he was gearing up to leave his Mississippi mark on Southern California blues. Smoke n' Fire from 1993, its 1995 encore The Real Deal (a title now used for three contemporary blues albums in a year's time: John Primer and Buddy Guy have also claimed it), and 1997's The Man from Mars nominate Smokey Wilson as one of the hottest late bloomers in the blues business. ~Biography by Bill Dahl

Sing The Blues

---

Album: With The William Clarke Band
Size: 105,3 MB
Time: 44:59
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 1990/1997
Styles: West Coast Blues
Art: Full

01. Down In Virginia (3:21)
02. I Wish I Was Single (5:49)
03. Howling Wolf (3:40)
04. Tell Me What Do You See (5:01)
05. Bar Room Blues (3:15)
06. Cold Chills (4:15)
07. Ghetto Woman (4:33)
08. Dimples (2:48)
09. Lein On My Body (4:29)
10. The Things I Used To Do (4:13)
11. Truckload Of Love (3:31)

This is a reissue, originally released 1990, issued posthumously in the memory of harmonica virtuoso William Clarke, who plays prominently along with his band. Both frequently performed together at Wilson's Pioneer Club and their close friendship is reflected in the musical interaction of Wilson's Mississippi roots mixed with Clarke's hard-blowin' harp attack. Wilson described his life best in "Tell Me What Do You See" with the words, "I've been all around the world/And blues is all I know to play." Other greats hop along for the ride, including keyboardist Fred Kaplan, and Mighty Flyers alumni Junior Watson and Alex Schultz. It's no accident that Wilson has some of Howlin' Wolf's vocal mannerisms on the song named after the Wolf himself. The story is that Wolf "willed" his voice to Wilson during one of Wolf's shows. ~Review by Char Ham

With The William Clarke Band

---