I’ve been back on a blues kick lately, listening to nothing else but the blues on the old turntable.  Nothing else can do it for me right now like the blues can.  I’ve been digging through my blues row, which makes up the biggest part of my collection.  The first blues record I ever bought was Lighting Hopkins, Sings The Blues, on the Score label.  Oh, what a record.  From there my blues record collecting exploded - and it’s turned into a nice collection now.  The blues are the roots of all American music - and there’s nothing else I can do to explain it.  It either tugs at your soul or it doesn’t.  You either feel it or you don’t.  And if you feel it, there’s nothing quite like it when compared to another musical genre.  I admit, I’m not always in the mood for the blues, but when I am, I think I enjoy it more than anything else. 

Cousin Justin agrees.  The blues are the one genre where we both meet with our musical tastes.  We also meet with 50s and 60s rhythm and blues and soul but then we split where I go more with jazz, 70s funk, reggae, bluegrass and roots music and Justin gets heavy into rock - 60s garage and all kinds of sub-genres (and cruise-ship calypso records).  But the blues, the blues are where it’s at with both of us.  It’s where we got our start in our love for record collecting.

We were talking today about things in general up at the office and Justin asked what I’ve been listening to.  I said I’ve been back in the blues stacks, and I just couldn’t seem to stop listening or get past Luther Allison’s Love Me Mama on Delmark.  Justin replied without hesitation, “Yeah, to me that’s the best blues record ever.”  I think I agree (modern anyways - it was put out in 1969)- you just have to listen to it to appreciate it - it expodes with the west-side Chicago soul sound but remains nitty and gritty, down and dirty.  Luther’s high pitched voice wails and his guitar wails along too.  It’s rockin’ yet laid back - the perfect mix of the blues.  It bridges the gap between old style delta stylings and modern Chicago electric - and incoroparates the Motown influenced soul style of singing that Chicago’s West Side was known for - along with such greats as Magic Sam, Otis Rush, Fenton Robinson, Son Seals and others. 

Although Magic Sam’s West Side Soul album is right up there and perhaps as good, nobody captured it quite like Luther did on this album, his debut and only recording on the Delmark label.  Delmark was THE label in the late 60s and early to mid 70s for blues, particularly for Chicago artists, who were producing the most innovative and immortal music the genre may have ever seen.  Heavily influenced by early electric Chicago pioneers such as Muddy Waters and Little Walter and others who came from the south to Chicago to make money recording and playing in blues bars, (and who were themselves influenced by the delta country greats and especially by T-Bone Walker, who revelotionized the modern electric guitar blues style), the new guys took it to the next level.  Following this period, to me the blues died a bit.  There were labels like Ann Arbor’s own Blind Pig (Ann Arbor has always loved Chicago blues - all the early Ann Arbor blues festivals showcased the best Chicago blues guys) who signed some of these Chicago guys in the late 70s and early 80s to record some albums that were really good, but it wasn’t quite the same.

I’m sure there were blues records that were much more influencial, and plenty more rare and historically important, but to us Cousins, it doesn’t get much better than this.  If you can find a copy - pick it up.  If you’re new to the blues, start here and see where it leads you.