Customer Reviews

Earthshaker

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Koko Taylor's "Earthshaker" is an essential blues album!She puts all of your nasal vocal in the musics here.Great jobs,specially with this band, full of bluesmasters! If you don't know who's Koko Taylor,this work will shows you why she's called the "Blues Diva"! Excellent job!

There is barely a single weak moment on Koko Taylor's 1978 LP.
Sure, her remakes of "I'm A Man" (as "I'm A Woman") and "Wang Dang Doodle" are less than innovative, but everything else is just plain great. And Taylor is backed by an excellent combo which includes guitarists Johnny Moore and Sammy Lawhorn, saxist Abb Locke, and the legendary Joe "Pinetop" Perkins on the piano.

Very few people can cover Howlin' Wolf and get away with it, but Koko Taylor does as good as anybody on a really solid "Spoonful", and her swaggering renditions of Mel London's "Cut You Loose" and the saucy Irma Thomas-single "You Can Have My Husband" are just magnificent.
"Let The Good Times Roll" and "Hey Bartender" still pop up on her set list today, and the self-penned slow blues "Please Don't Dog Me" is one of Taylor's best original songs.
You really can't go wrong with any of Taylor's excellent recordings for Alligator records, but this one is as good as any of them, a must-have for fans, and casual listeners should find a lot to love as well. "The Earthshaker" is one great, well-arranged blues record with plenty of highlights and virtually no let-downs.

Koko Taylor is a living legend! The blues has been so commercialized and copied that we often do not recognize it in its essential forms. Koko Taylor is an earth-shaking embodiment of the blues tradition. She is the real deal. Straight up without a chaser. Get this album wherever you can find it and listen to it over and over. Koko Taylor will heal your soul and give you a spiritual education in living in the world. When I listen to her version of "Let the Good Times Roll" I don't want to hear anybody else sing it again. You will travel to some pretty deep and scary places listening to her sing "Walking the Backstreet" but you will emerge emboldened to live and love life to the fullest!

If you want one album to introduce new listeners to Koko Taylor or Blues done by women this is the one. It contains her best known songs done very well. The album is a little shorter than it could be - I'd have liked to see "Sure had a wonderful time last night", "Come to Mama" or "I can love you like a woman" in there. But it rocks. And so does The Queen.

..."A sho'nuff earthshaking force of nature..Koko stands for blues and if you haven't heard her, you are missing the best of the best...she can rock the house with nothing but a mike and that voice..don't miss a thing on this CD, this is one of her best--"I'm A Woman", "Hey Bartender", the Willie Dixon Classics "Spoonful" and "Wang Dang Doodle"(Redux). Put her on and let the good times roll!"--(Good thing I print all my reviews, huh?-Bka, Kowtown.)

Koko Taylor can sing. Starting off with Let The Good Times roll. That lets you know that this record is just getting started. Then with wIllie dixons Spoonful.Next Little Miltons Walking the Back streets.hey Bartender,Then I'm a Woman then irma Thomas's You can have My husband then Please don't dog me and finally she ends with her signature. whoooo All of those songs I just listed were THE BOMB. Oh wait a minute all of those songs I just listed was the whole album. Koko singing with all of her energy. Lord if you could hear Koko now. Koko really defines her self with this record.

I've recently been on a Koko Taylor binge, and of the four CDs that I've given repeated listens to, "The Earthshaker" is by far and away my favorite. This CD is a testament to why she affectionately is dubbed "The Queen of the Chicago Blues." The liner notes state that "Koko's music is pure, unabashed bar music," and "Earthshaker" provides plenty of ammunition in support of that argument. Many of the songs, including "Let The Good Times Roll," "Spoonful," "Hey Bartender," "You Can Have My Husband" "Wang Dang Doodle," and her remake of Muddy Waters' "I'm A Man" ("I'm A Woman") are classic electric blues standards. That being said, my favorite song on the CD is the more laid back "Walking The Backstreets," which I had not heard before I listened to "Earthshaker." Given her incredible voice, which is both gravelly and sweet, and her intuitive understanding of electric blues, I find it hard to believe that Koko Taylor ever has made a bad CD. "Earthshaker" is awesome and highly recommended. "Force of Nature," "Royal Blue," and "Old School" also are good CDs by this top notch blues diva.

In the modern era of blues, mainly electric blues, say from the post-World War II period women blues singers, especially black women blues singers, are probably underrepresented. One thinks of "Big Mama" Thornton, Ruth Brown, Etta James, and the artist under review, Koko Taylor. There are other lesser lights but not nearly the numbers that I can, and have, recounted in this space from the 1920's and 1930's. Nevertheless for sheer energy, volume and flat out "good time" dancing blues Ms. Taylor will do quite well, against male or female. The title of this CD, "The Earthshaker" is not mistaken or out of place.

That said, I remember in one of the segments of Martin Scorsese six-part PBS tribute to the blues a few years back that when Ms. Taylor was interviewed concerning the influence that Chicago's Chess Records and its management, the Chess brothers (the guys that discovered her), had on the blues scene she was less that complimentary with the "shake" that that pair had given her. The whole question of the exploitation of black blues talent (and not only of that musical genre) deserves separate coverage and is beyond what I want to look at in this CD. However, I would point out, there is probably more truth that meets the eye concerning the Koko's gripes about proper promotion, accreditation and payment (in short, the correct distribution of the dough, okay) and that Koko was not just being abstruse in the matter. That may also explain, a little at least, the dearth of women blues singers that come readily to mind.

But enough of that, for now. Here Koko belts out her standards, accompanied by a fine back up band made up of well-known, and in the case of "Pinetop" Perkins on keyboards legendary, musicians including Johnny Moore and Sammy Lawhorn on the guitars. Nice right, for those who know those names? Hits here include the Willie Dixon classic "Spoonful" that Howlin' Wolf ripped up. Well, Koko does the same here. My favorite on this CD is the slow mournful blues "Walking the Back Streets" (needless to say crying in those back streets about a two-timing man). But so much for my favorite because the reason you get this CD is Koko's signature Willie Dixon classic "Wang Dang Doodle". Howlin' Wolf covered that tune as well. Koko wins that duel though. Listen up.

"Koko stands for blues and if you haven't heard her

This CD was recorded in the late 1970s and featured a veteran band. The sound quality is a little thin and has less bottom than her more recent recordings. Song quality is spotty. A good CD not one of her best