Customer Reviews

Blues From The Gutter

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hey blues piano lover, I really think you should get hold of ALL of Champion Jack Dupree's recordings! Failing that, make absolutely certain you get this one - buy, beg, borrow, or steal.

Recorded as a stereo album in 1958 in New York, Jack never sounded better, backed here by a small group including sax and electric guitar. Every track is memorable: Strollin' - "All you got to do is put one foot in front of the other!"; Can't Kick The Habit; Junker Blues (revisited from 1944 original); Nasty Boogie (it is!); Stack-O-Lee - "Stack-O-Lee, shot Billy De Lyon; and he shot him two or three times".

It was just after this recording that Jack decamped to Europe for many years, recording many sides especially with with John Mayall, until his triumphant return "back home to New Orleans" in the late 1980s.

Only drawback is short playing time (37:17) but with quality like this... just play it again! I have twice given my copy away when I wanted to give someone a single blues CD - the music is accessible to all, and at the same time it's as blues as blues can be.

I've been listening to blues for 40 years. When I heard this about 5 years ago I thought "This is how it sounds when they get it right". It's difficult to capture the delicate interplay of a blues combo made up of highly professional players. The liner notes on this are superb, and they explain Champion Jack's very early tutelage under a blues player born in the mid 19th century. Get this album and enjoy the finest blues you can hear.

I heard Champion Jack first on WWOZ New Orleans and nibbled on this CD. I love good barrelhouse piano and there is not a weak track on the disk. With guitar in places, sax in places, both in places, and they blend well. Like a good club set.

On to the next ....

If you scour the listings on Amazon you'll probably find hundreds, if not thousands, of reviews that say something like "If you only want one (insert Blues/Jazz/Rock/Classical/Opera/Pop etc etc etc) album, make it this one!" Well....loathe as I am to add to that overloaded list - If you only want one blues album, consider this one. This is the real deal. Loose, confident, authentic, swinging and immediate. Of course you need more than one blues album - there are hundreds of essential ones that could be listed. Just make sure this is one of them. Champion Jack Dupree is backed here by Pete Brown on alto sax; Ennis Lowery on guitar; Wendell Marshall on bass and the great Willie Jones on drums on a selection of tunes that sound so immediate they could be in the room with you. The real deal indeed!

As an interesting footnote - apparently this album and the guitar work of Ennis Lowery on it was of great inspiration to the late Brian Jones when he was getting The Rolling Stones together all those years ago. Lineage.

I really like the first song. The rest, well I like some licks and his singing, and ...I like that this is the real thing. Not a pickup band making blues-like sounds. Real blues, from a bluesman. Some songs seem like filler, or leftovers from other album sessions, but I think maybe if I went into a barrelhouse where he was playing in the 1040's, this might be a fair sampling of what I would hear.

This is an excellent record, probably the best from Champion Jack Dupree. I would hesitate to call it a pure blues record, since many of the tracks do not qualify as blues (e.g. Frankie & Johnny, Stack O Lee) but the mixture is well chosen. His version of "TB Blues" is the best I have heard since Big Joe Williams. If you break down the tracks into components, they may not appear sensational: the musicians are OK, but not sensational, Dupree's voice is OK, but not sensational, etc. but here everything works out and the shortcomings are barely noticeable. They probably recorded what they had at the time, which was not much (only 10 tracks) and the record is on the short side for modern CD's. Nontheless: it can be stronly recommended.