Muddy Waters - At Newport 1960

Tracks: I Got My Brand on You//(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man//Baby Please Don't Go//Soon Forgotten//Tiger in Your Tank//I've Got My Mojo Working//I've Got My Mojo Working (Part 2)// Goodbye Newport Blues

NOTE TO THE READER - Since first reviewing this album I have listened to it yet again, and I like it a lot more than I did initially. 8.5/10

I don't go into albums hoping to be disappointed. In fact I listen to very few albums that I dislike, since I try to pick and choose and avoid stuff that I know I won't enjoy. The problem with a list like this, however, is that it frequently thrusts me into contact with things that, while excellent representations of their style and times, are not the sort of music I'd ever really want to listen to.

Which is a long way of saying that I guess this is pretty good, but it's not really my thing. I don’t know, it’s not really my thing. It’s a very well-played album, and the melodies are generally very strong, but Muddy Waters sings everything in such a stiff style that it doesn’t really resonate. Ok, so this is a brilliant album by the standards of electric blues – it’s just that I’ve never been a huge fan of electric blues. So, while I don’t really care for it all that much I will give it very high marks and urge people to go listen to it I guess. I like Howlin’ Wolf – is that enough?

Putting aside personal reservations, this is a very impressive album. The arrangements are dense and complex, folding tinkling piano and smooth underwater harmonica together over a plodding, boom-bap drum beat through which Waters occasionally sees fit to slither his rather impressive guitar. There’s some nifty slide work, and lots of fancy bends, and in the end the guitar sounds almost as much like the harmonica as the harmonica does. Then, Muddy, while he may have a vocal rhythm I’m not all that taken with, does have a wonderful deep voice, like a piece of oak. And he changes it up a bit, too – you get long, slow stuff on “I Got My Brand On You”, while “Tiger in Your Tank” is positively snappy – lots of toe-tapping fun. Hell the bridge on “Tiger in Your Tank” even rocks, and hard, with some amazing slithery guitar work. After “Tiger in Your Tank” things pick-up significantly, actually – Muddy Waters sounds much more natural in his vocals and everything swings without the stiffness of earlier on. The apex of this is the two-part “I Got My Mojo Working”, which lasts seven minutes and roars along on a snare drum, a snappy piano vamp and the handclaps of the audience. There's call-and-response vocals and amazing propulsive drumming and it's one of the hardest rocking things we've had so far. And then they do it all over again.

You get lots of pretty good stuff here. Technically, it’s very impressive, and the material is very strong. Most of the problems I have with it might actually be attributable to the fact that this is a live recording, and so loses a lot of the dense, low-fi, smoky charm of a studio recording.

I will never be the biggest fan of this sort of stuff, but it’s a very fine album, and managed to impress me despite myself. I think I think the problem might just be that it's one of those albums that isn't brilliant overall, but which has a few tracks that are good enough to make it essential listening. It’s a great example of Chicago blues, anyway, fusing gospel, jazz and, well, blues, into something extremely impressive - and Waters had an obvious hand in fellows such as James Brown and the Rolling Stones. I just wish Waters actually cared what he was singing about on the earlier songs, instead of just using the lyrics as a vehicle for his up-beat shouting. I mean, he did a great slow song with the closing "Goodbye Newport Blues"! It's a genuinely affecting song in which Muddy seems to really care about what he's singing, talking about his music and his life instead of cliche nonsense about doing chicks. I guess he just had to work up to it. This is a problem with live albums, I suppose. On the one hand you capture the moment but on the other you have to spend half the album waiting for the moment to arrive.

I am doing a bad review of this album but I don’t care.

7.5/10

Download: Muddy Waters - I've Got My Mojo Working Mp3

Download: Muddy Waters - Goodbye Newport Blues Mp3

28. The Incredible Jimmy Smith - Back at the Chicken Shack (1956)

Tracks: Back at the Chicken Shack//When I Grow Too Old to Dream//Minor Chant//Messy Bessy//On the Sunny Side of the Street

I feel as though I should like this more than I do. I mean, it’s on the list isn’t it? That means it must be either very good or very important – or possibly both. Well, in this instance I know it’s the latter. Jimmy Smith is apparently responsible for popularising the use of the Hammond organ in jazz, which is kind of a big deal. He does make a good case for it – he mimics an upright bass with considerable alacrity, carrying the songs on simple walking lines and some interesting comping and subtle melodics. Every now and then, he busts out a solo, and he does quite well there, too. As a consequence of all the organ everywhere, the result is a feel much closer to the blues than to straight jazz, and it’s probably for this reason that people tend to type this as a new, hybrid form – soul-jazz.

In keeping with this “soulful” bent, things are by and large quite laid back and relaxed. There aren’t many grand gestures here. The result is something extremely pleasant and listenable, more about a sustained and cheery mood than anything else. The organ chugs along, there’s some subtle yet persistent drumming back in there somewhere, and the solos are for the better part taken by a smoky sax on the right and a gently Latinate guitar on the right. It’s extremely cool and soothing.

Unfortunately, this also translates into it not always being immediately dazzling. I do like this album, but I doubt I could ever care about it. I have always liked the Hammond, but at the same time I’ve never been all that fond of smoky, switched-on blues. This is the sort of stuff you’d expect to hear playing in a middle-brow art house cinema before the film starts. I don’t have much of a problem with it, I suppose, but it’s not doing much to excite me beyond featuring an organ.

Which, I suppose, is unfair to Jimmy Smith. Look at the cover – he’s not trying to change the world. I’m basically criticising this for being exactly what it sets out to be – pleasant, frequently silly mood music for summer afternoons spend frying things on a hotplate. Smith’s captured the feel of late February wonderfully, and he’s owed props for that. This is a charming, unpretentious little album, worth checking by anyone with a fondness for either soul or jazz. It swings when it needs to and grooves fine most of the rest of the time, and that’s probably enough. The title track builds gradually in insistency throughout its length without ever breaking a sweat, and is ideal for either slow dances or fucking. “Minor Chant” has a neat little melody that I’m sure I’ve heard somewhere before and some pretty cool break-out drum solos. And “Messy Bessy” has a great mid section where everything falls in together and gradually just gets more, I don’t know... “Intense” seems like an inappropriate word to use in connection with an album this determinedly relaxed.

So! I put this album on again intent on giving it a poor review, and instead it works its magic on me and I end up reviewing it poorly. I do feel less tense, now. I have taken a nap in two years, but now I sort of want to. I can almost feel Smith, reaching out from the aether, gently rubbing his key-polished fingers into the rigid cords of my trapezius. No real high or low points, just sort of there, but in a good way. I suppose in that sense it manages to sum up most everything I love and hate about jazz in one package.

And hey! It's basically all the good parts of the first Doors album with a sense of humour and none of the shit, so it's worth it just for that.

7.5/10

Download: The Incredible Jimmy Smith - Back at the Chicken Shack Mp3