Blues
How many Jamaican-born bluesmen have recorded with John Lee Hooker and toured with Otis Redding? It's a safe bet there's only one: Eddie Kirkland, who's engaged in some astonishing onstage acrobatics over the decades (like standing on his head while playing guitar on TV's Don Kirshner's Rock Concert). But you won't find any ersatz reggae grooves cluttering Kirkland's work. He was brought up around Dothan, AL, before heading north to Detroit in 1943. There he hooked up with Hooker five years later, recording with him for several firms as well as under his own name for RPM in 1952, King in 1953, and Fortune in 1959. Tru-Sound Records, a Prestige subsidiary, invited Kirkland to Englewood Cliffs, NJ, in 1961-62 to wax his first album, It's the Blues Man! The polished R&B band of saxist King Curtis crashed head on into Kirkland's intense vocals, raucous guitar and harmonica throughout the exciting set. Exiting the Motor City for Macon, GA, in 1962, Kirkland signed on with Otis Redding as a sideman and show opener not long thereafter. Redding introduced Kirkland to Stax/Volt co-owner Jim Stewart, who flipped over Eddie's primal dance workout "The Hawg." It was issued on Volt in 1963, billed to Eddie Kirk. By the dawn of the 1970s, Kirkland was recording for Pete Lowry's Trix label; he also waxed several CDs for Deluge in the '90s.
By Bill Dahl , All Music Guide.
**
The Energy Man, the Gypsy of the Blues, had just completed another round of coast-to-coast performances, entertaining audiences with his electrifying blues act as he's done for decades, a seemingly ageless wonder.
Probably only a few of Eddie Kirkland's fans saw past the muscular physique, exotic headgear, and hard-hitting stage show to see the toll the years had taken on an 80-year-old man who was driving 7000 grueling miles in the summer heat in a 1978 station wagon, giving all he could in his performances...
Although his stints with John Lee Hooker and Otis Redding are the most famous, Eddie Kirkland's entire bio is quite impressive: born in Jamaica, raised in Alabama from the time he was two until he went off with the Sugar Girls Medicine show at twelve. His teens brought him to Indiana, eventually settling in Detroit. There he toured and recorded with John Lee Hooker for seven and a half years. Then Kirkland moved to Georgia, where he was bandleader for Otis Redding. The continuous road tours had him working with Ruth Brown, Little Richard, Ben King, Little Johnnie Taylor and many more greats. In 1962, Kirkland recorded "It's the Blues Man" for Prestige, and later his hit the "Hawg" recorded by Stax/Volt label earned him national celebrity. His appearance at the 1973 Ann Arbor Jazz & Blues festival was electrifying as he reunited with his Motor City pals Little Mack Collins and the Partymakers. In the 1970s Kirkland recorded two excellent albums for Trix and in the process developed his characteristic unrelenting dance beat and became the Energy Man. Since those recordings, although he's been touring 40+ weeks per year for the past two decades, Eddie Kirkland's albums haven't represented the strength and variety of his performances.
Until, of course, this release: Democrat Blues captures the Energy Man in the fall of 2002 as he came back through his former hometown, Toledo. He's frequently made stops in Toledo on his regular trips to Detroit, but this time he stayed a week and spent some time as he revisited Monroe Street where he lived and boxed, and Hines Farm, the rural African-American venue famous for its dirt track as well as a stop for B.B., John Lee and of course, Eddie Kirkland, on the Chittlin Circuit. The recordings teamed Eddie with bassist Fuzzy Samuels, folk-blues icon Dave "Snaker" Ray and drummer Andre Wright. He headlined the blues conference "Screamin' & Cryin' About the Blues." The first session was a rare acoustic guitar affair; Kirkland played solo and with Ray and produced the haunting "Ten Commandments" and the autobiographical "Good Time Joe," both of which are on Democrat Blues. The second session for this album brought in fellow Carribean Fuzzy Samuels (known for his work with Steve Stills and his supergroup, as well as Taj Mahal) and jazz drummer Andre Wright, as the guitar players plugged in. The effects on Kirkland's guitar are legendary to those who've seen him perform and some of them are right out front on the first tune on Democrat Blues, "Walk In The Dark," as Eddie plays an amplified acoustic that's really switched on. He hits on his old colleague from Detroit, Bobo Jenkins, for the title tune and touches upon Elmore James too before he closed with "the original Rock Me Baby" by Lil Son Jackson, "Rockin' & Rollin'." Additional songs on Democrat Blues were taken from Kirkland's mesmerizing live performance at the blues conference held the following weekend, with the same band. The resulting disc is Eddie Kirkland's his finest release since the 1970s.
The album also contains a bonus disc with the all the songs by Eddie Kirkland released on Blue Suit's Hastings Street Grease: Detroit Blues Is Alive! series - and one unreleased track from those sessions.++
By Jim O'Neal.
**
Duke Dawson- Drums
Leon Horner- Bass
Eddie Kirkland- Guitar, Harmonica, Vocals
Dave Ray- Guitar
Fuzzy Samuels- Bass
Andre Wright- Drums
Emmanuel Young- Guitar
**
Vol. 1 Democrat Blues
01. Walk in the Dark
02. Slow Driving
03. Ten Commandments
04. Democrat Blues
05. Call Me On The Phone / The Thrill Is Gone
06. I've Got My Bloodshot Eyes on You
07. Must've Done Something Wrong
08. Too Late
09. Good Time Joe
10. Rockin' & Rollin'
*
Vol. 2 Hastings Street Grease
01. Going Back to the Backwoods
02. There's Got to Be Some Changes Made
03. I Want to Marry You (Unreleased)
04. I Walk Down Hasting Street
05. You Ain't Fooling Me Baby
06. Something's Going Wrong
**
NoPassword
*
DLink
*
No comments:
Post a Comment