Customer Reviews

Chicago Blues Festival 1964

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

 

 

The Concert is great, typical Buddy/Junior Gig full of great music and energy, harp and guitar fantastic. But the sound on the first few tracks, especially on "Stormy Mondy" is so bad, it is not to be understood why it was released.
There are many great recordings of these two fabulous blues-artists, but this bad bootleg is only to be recommended for the die-hard fan or completist.
This being said, I can admit that I am both, when it comes to these two genuises. I enjoy the record, but it reminds one of sitting way too far in the back of a badly engineered concert.
BEWARE!

After giving this CD one listen I can say that an otherwise great performance was not recorded well. It seems like the horns were closer to the mic than the guitar or the harmonica. The vocals are muddy sounding and really weren't recorded well at all. The last three "bonus tracks" are studio recordings and don't feature Junior Wells either, so overall this release was a disappointment to me.

This music is actually really good. Smouldering guitar playing from Buddy Guy, and great renditions of "Stormy Monday", "Leave My Girl Alone" (which is oddly titled "Woman Blues" on the cover), and "Messin' With The Kid" - in addition to a horrible "Satisfaction".

But the vocals are terrible. Not badly sung, you understand, but badly recorded, at times impossible to understand unless you know the words by heart. The only exceptions are the three bonus tracks, and they are studio tracks, not live recordings.
This is rather strange, since most of the instruments are decently recorded, but the vocal tracks vary from bad to awful, making this an album for dedicated fans only.
2 1/2 stars.