Customer Reviews

Daddy When Is Mama Comin Home

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This CD is down home blues without any refinement or inhibition. Jack Johnson churns out simple but contagious, jumpin' grooves for a such a surprising set that it will have you scratching your head sometimes and wanting to tap your foot most of the time. His lyrics are simple and focus on common issues of low-income families, but he avoids most of the cliches. Big Jack is so determined to get his point across, he will spew out rhymes that don't exactly rhyme, but that's all in good fun.

This is one of those gritty unpolished records that harkens back to sitting around with a big family and trying to cobble together something fun to sing. As the liner notes say, Big Jack would go down to a local bar and bounce some of his lyrics off the people in his town and get feedback direct from those people. The blues he plays here drip with grease and BBQ sauce. They are silly at times and serious at others.

One of the silliest is perhaps the ode to Northwest Airlines. It goes... "My baby called me early this morning \\ She wanna know which way was the safest way back home \\ I told her... \\ Don't you catch no bus \\ Don't you catch no train \\ Take Northwest Airlines, the safest way I know."

Oh and then there's Chinese Blues, which is perhaps THE silliest - playing "blues kungfu"... You won't find this sort of thing from any other bluesman but Big Jack.

Unmistakably, Big Jack got chops, both on guitar and vocals. He takes on various shades of growl with his voice, which is naturally deep, gruff and meaty. He takes on ambitiously fast rhythms sometimes, where I think he's the only one of his band who can keep up, but he keeps things loose enough that he keeps you having fun, bouncing the silliness off the listener.

You have to participate in these tunes - dormant listening is not the way with most of the songs on this CD. While some of the songs are on the slower (normal) side, many songs are great fast driving rhythms that make you wish you were chasing something or doing something active, maybe getting on the freeway or something. Hah.

Definitely this record is not your ordinary blues. Give this one a listen and see what sort of shapes the blues can take in the Mississippi Delta without sounding anything like other bluesmen, which in itself is not an easy task!