Willie Buck - Cell Phone Man

Album: Cell Phone Man
Size: 137,5 MB
Time: 59:30
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2012
Styles: Blues, Chicago blues
Art: Full

1. Doin' Good And Bad At The Same Time (3:13)
2. Darling I Miss You So (3:02)
3. Strange Woman (5:42)
4. Cell Phone Man (3:40)
5. I Want My Baby (3:14)
6. I Don't Know Why (3:35)
7. Two Women Talking (3:32)
8. Two Trains Running (3:28)
9. The Love We Share (3:36)
10. Going Down Main Street (2:33)
11. Streamline Woman (3:57)
12. What's The Matter With The Mill (2:33)
13. Tow Truck Man (3:17)
14. Tried To Work Something Out With You (2:56)
15. My Eyes Keep Me In Trouble (3:47)
16. I Wanna Talk To My Baby (4:01)
17. Blow Wind Blow (3:14)

This latest Delmark release by vocalist Willie Buck is very much influenced by Muddy Waters and the classic 1950s Chicago sound. Buck is backed by the Rockin’ Johnny Band with Johnny and Rick Kreher on guitar, John Sefner bass, Steve Bass on drums, the excellent Barrelhouse Chuck on piano and Martin Lang and Bharath Rajakumar sharing blues harp duties.

‘Doin’ Good And Bad At The Same Time’ opens the disc; it’s a Buck original employing a very Hubert Sumlin-ish guitar riff from Johnny. ‘Darling I Miss You So’ is here credited to Ted Taylor, but I believe Tiny Topsy and Lillian Offitt cut this song before Taylor. The versions by Topsy, Lillian Offitt, and in fact Taylor himself are credited to M. Babb who is apparently Morgan Babb, aka The Reverend Morgan Babb (thanks Mike!). Whatever, Buck and Co. give it a neat shuffle treatment, harp lays out but Chuck is strong on piano, and Buck’s vocal is impressive.

The Muddy influence is obvious on covers of ‘Strange Woman’, ‘I Don’t Know Why’, ‘Two Trains Running’, ‘Going Down Main Street’, ‘Streamline Woman’, ‘What’s The Matter With The Mill’ (aka ‘Can’t Get No Grinding’), ‘My Eyes Keep Me In Trouble’, and ‘Blow Wind Blow’. ‘Strange Woman’ utilises a ‘Help Me’ bass pattern, on ‘Two Trains Running’ Willie’s vocal is supported by Johnny’s acoustic guitar on a country blues-styled version. ‘Streamline Woman’ features Johnny’s skittering Muddy-style slide and Bharath Rajakumar on harp allied to a tough vocal treatment from Buck. ‘My Eyes Keep Me In Trouble’ pretty much follows the original version, as does ‘Blow Wind Blow’ with Martin Lang playing blues harp and Barrelhouse Chuck solid on piano behind Buck’s in-the-pocket vocal.

The fine original, ‘Cell Phone Man’, features the twin harps of Lang and Rajakumar on a song that owes a debt to the classic late ‘50s Wolf sound. However, Magic Sam is the reference point for the bouncy original, ‘Two Women Talking’. ‘Tow Truck Man’ is also Muddy style, utilising a rhythm pattern similar to ‘I Want To Be Loved’. The Buck original, ‘Tried To Work Something Out With You’, is definitely my pick of the litter, a bouncy shuffle with Rajakumar switching to guitar and Lang on blues harp allied to a sweet vocal from Willie Buck. ‘I Wanna Talk To My Baby’ is another acoustic country blues, with Willie’s vocal backed only by Rockin’ Johnny’s guitar.

By now you may have pegged Willie Buck as just a Muddy Waters imitator, and for sure he is heavily influenced by Muddy, but there is more to him than that. He plays old school ’50s Chicago blues the way it was always played. Nothing slick, no soul-blues posturing, no rock-blues, just the real deal, rough as a bear’s arse blues of the kind we don’t hear too much of these days. /Phil Wight, Blues & Rhythm

(For personnel details, see artwork included.)

Cell Phone Man mc
Cell Phone Man gofile

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