Having Fun: Live Meeting of the Chicago Blues Masters

by Louisiana Red / Carey Bell

Touring and promoting shows for any kind of roots music is a perilous business both logistically and financially. But sometimes events align and the opportunity to bring together an amazing set of talents and people in one place with a sufficient budget and the facilities to properly showcase them comes together. The Easter Weekend of 1990 was one such time and place. These recordings were originally made for a compilation CD released which promoted the Burnley Mechanics Blues Festival. Thirty two years later what we have here is a set of superb real blues. These are talents that we will not see the like of again. All professionally recorded and now given a top class remastering to make the sound even more powerful.

Louisiana Red can genuinely be thought of as the youngest of the 'first generation' of post war electric bluesmen. At a very young age he was playing with the likes of Elmore James and Muddy Waters. Familiarity with Red's years living in Europe, when he played and toured regularly, should not blind us to the magnitude of his talent. Here he plays and sings in that rocking Electric Delta/Chicago style. He mangles the words a bit a couple of times and we could have tidied that up with the scalpel of the editing suite (which we did on some of the other tracks, but that's a trade secret). But I find it rather endearing, this is enthusiasm and raw energy!

Carey Bell was simply a blues harmonica maestro. Beautiful tone and great ideas. A sharp witted guy too - he had to be - given life then in the Chicago ghetto and the profession of freelance musician. I spent a lot of time with Carey on his solo tours for me, and working together he never put on a less than top notch show. He had a real knack of getting an audience to adore him without in any way adding spurious showmanship or playing to the gallery.