Customer Reviews

Heroes of the Blues: The Very Best of Fred McDowell

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This is my first Fred McDowell CD, and it's more than satisfying. His influence on rock music is obvious and significant despite his claim that he don't play no rock'n roll.
As Keith Richards might say, this music swings. McDowell is a performer with a distinct voice and slide guitar style. This CD is worthwhile.

Over the past year I have been doing a review of all the major country blues artists that I can get material on. High on that list would be the performer on this CD, the legendary Mississippi Fred McDowell. Before discussing this CD, however, let me put this blues man in context. I first heard Brother McDowell and his magnificent slide guitar riffs as a backup to some of "Big Mama" Thornton's early blues numbers like "Little School Girl" and "The Red Rooster". I have also noted elsewhere that McDowell performed a very important service to the continuation of the country blues tradition when he provided mentorship to the great modern folk/country/blues singer songwriter Bonnie Raitt.

Ms. Raitt has profusely acknowledged his influence and just a peep at her own work demonstates the truth of that influence. Furthermore there is another place where McDowell has demonstrated his vast influence. That is on The Rolling Stones. Their main blues influence might have been another Delta product, Muddy Waters, but the Stones did a cover of McDowell's "You've Got To Move" (and gave him the royalties for his cancer treatment) on their Sticky Fingers album that has withstood the test of time. All these anecdotes are presented for one purpose- to show, if anyone needed showing, that Mc Dowell rightly takes his place with the likes of Bukka White, Skip James, Son House and Mississippi John Hurt as the legends of country blues.

For those not in the know the theme of the country blues is about rural life, about picking cotton in the Delta (or hard scrabble farming elsewhere) and, most importantly, about those Saturday night bouts with booze, women and worked up passions that could go any which way, including jail and the graveyard. McDowell follows that tradition although on a number of cuts here, those in which he is accompanied by his wife's singing along, he will also pay homage to the deeply religious expression of the travails of black existence at the turn of the 20th century Jim Crow South.

The most famous exemplars of that tradition are of course Blind Willie Johnson and the Reverend Gary Davis but others, including McDowell have taken a turn at that end of the blues spectrum in order to sanctify "the devil's music". Needless to say you must listen to "You've Got To Move", "Levee Camp Blues", "61 Highway" and "Kokomo Blues" here.

I'm going to be unashamedly bias here because when it comes to down and dirty no holds barred Delta blues very few touch Fred Mcdowell full stop.
He has the voice, he has the chops, he has the songs and he certainly has the MOJO.
So close your eyes smell the chitlins absorb the sound of the deep south and say hello to Fred for me .

Terrific album from start to finish. It's hard to get enougth of McDowell's unique "talking" guitar and each cut on this CD is stand alone wonderful. A great selection from a true Delta Blues master.

This CD makes the perfect introduction to Mississippi Fred. He was a fine, interesting blues artist and it is easily worth the money.