Customer Reviews

Deluxe Edition

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

 

 

This is certainly not everything you could ever want from Lonnie Brooks, but it is a really great place to start.

Brooks (actually Lee Baker, Jr.) plays a tough synthesis of Louisiana swamp blues and gritty Chicago blues, and this fine collection rounds up 15 highlights from Brooks's stay with Alligator Records in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Lonnie Brooks started out as a session man, playing on Jimmy Reed's "Big Boss Man", and Charly released his first album, "The Crawl" in 1955, so he is no spring chicken, but his music is fresh and vibrant, an amalgam of blues, rock, R&B, and a little bit of soul, but blues first and foremost.

Lonnie Brooks is a great singer, a fine guitar player, and an excellent songwriter, and this collection is a great place to start appreciating one of Chicago's top bluesmen. A good hour of well-wrought, nicely varied contemporary blues highlighted by the swinging, soulful "Something You Got", the rootsy acoustic "Roll Of The Tumbling Dice", the funky "Hoodoo She Do", and the slow burner "Cold Lonely Nights". Well, everything is good, actually.

Other career highlights include the albums "Hot Shot" and "Bayou Lightning", and the delightful "Lone Star Shootout", a collaboration with fellow guitarists Phillip Walker and Long John Walker. All highly recommended.

If you're one of "Shaq's, The King Of The World Blues Reviewer's" loyal fans, you already know that string bending, electric blues, is what I live for! The reason I bought this CD was I heard a song Lonnie cut with Stevie Ray Vaughn, and one song of Lonnie's, included on a classic blues album. Based on the two aforementioned songs, I enthusiastically bought this CD, hoping to get a lot of true Chicago style blues. I was very disappointed. Lonnie is really "swamp" or "Bayou" blues. That in my opinion, is a distant, distant, distant, 1/10 cousin, to Chicago blues! If "Bayou" blues is your genre, then buy this CD. If you're hoping for something in the realm of SRV, Albert, Buddy, Otis, Luther, you will be disappointed.

When reviewing various blues artist over the past year in this space I have spilled much ink on places like the Mississippi Delta, Chicago, Memphis and Texas. I have spent very little time talking about Cajun country, the bayous of Louisiana or the Mississippi River port town of News Orleans as sources of the blues tradition. When one thinks of the bayous one tends to think of the Cajun-centered accordion or Zydeco music. News Orleans brings to mind jazz more than the blues, except maybe some barrelhouse influence. That omission seems now to have been flat out wrong as the artist under review, `The Voodoo Daddy" Lonnie Brooks, amply demonstrates.

Sure, Lonnie (and on this album his son Ronnie Baker as well) has mastered basic blues lines as any successful electric blues guitarist must but his music has that little extra "funky" edge that one gets when listening to better New Orleans jazz and Zydeco music, especially that big old sax blaring out to beat the band. That is what the Voodoo Daddy brings to the table. Here it starts right out with the first track "Jealous Man" carries through to "Hoodoo She Do" the aptly named "Zydeco" and finishes up nicely with "Rolling Of The Tumbling Dice". More on this kind of bayou-derived music, especially under the influence of Clifton Chenier who was instrumental in jump starting Lonnie's career, later. For now listen here- you can heard those swamp sounds from those boys from Lake Charles, Lafayette and environs now, can't you?

great blues from the texas bluesman himself,from the rockin jealous man to the great father like son there is know to the great acoustic roll of the dice,its a nice cd to add to your collection