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This is one of the best efforts of John Hammond's career. It features the old blues numbers that have been a staple of Hammond's work, but with a slippery, playful funkiness that was never there before. Hammond has always had a strong voice, and the music flows out of him more naturally and appealingly than ever before. In fact, he sounds so at ease that he falls right in with Charles Brown on the two numbers where Mr. "Drifting Blues" himself plays piano. Little Charlie & the Nightcats back up Hammond on seven of the album's dozen tracks. They introduce an easy-going swing to numbers by Little Walter, Johnny "Guitar" Watson and Howlin' Wolf that allows Hammond to give these old songs a new spin and make them his own.
--Geoffrey Himes
In the 1990s, Hammond's voice, guitar, and harp are those rarest of all instruments: the mediums of African-American expression managed absolutely by a white blues performer. Using producer J. J. Cale's band, Lil' Charlie and the Night- cats, and John Lee Hooker to prime advantage, he sends a steady charge of subtle fervency through backwoods or citified tunes from the likes of Charles Brown, Tom Waits, Chuck Berry, and Son House (whose "Preachin' the Blues" finds interpreter Hammond almost speaking in tongues).
-- © Frank John Hadley 1993