Customer Reviews

I Can Tell

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I heard this when it first came out in'67 and until I went to the record shop to find more John Hammond records, I was suprised to find out he was a white kid. Featured on this record is Robbie Robertson on lead guitar, Rick Danko on bass and Bill Wyman on bass on 2 tracks. The drummer was from the Ray Charles Orchestra. John Hammond's best record.

As a middle class '60's white teenager in Modesto, California I grew up listening to Zeppelin, the Stones, and other British invasion bands that introduced me to the blues. But when I heard John Hammond's album "I Can Tell" at a friend's house I was floored. This album has so much feeling and the playing is so good & so tight that it has to this day remained one of my favorite blues albums of all times.

If you're not familiar with John Hammond,this would be an excellent place to start.John Hammond does 2 distinctly different types of blues,acoustic and electric,this cd along with others like "Big city blues" on the vanguard label are good electric blues cds.If you happened to get an acoustic cd and didn't like it don't give up on John Hammond until you hear his electric blues.

One of the great blues albums of all time;past or present,black or white. If you can't find a place in your head for this album, I would suggest moving on to some other musical genre. Classic.

Not only John Hammond's best,but Robbie Robertson's
best guitar work. I've had this album since the late 60's and it is still one of my favorites out of 4,000 albums.

I first heard John Hammond as a senior in high school in 1967. I recently saw him perform at The Steam Plant in Salida, Colorado. We're both older and he still is a GREAT bluesman! What a performance. This album/CD is tremendous. Give his new stuff a try, you won't be disappointed. The best blues out there!!

If you like Muddy Waters' solo, with his band, or with collaborators (for instance, the superb album Fathers & Sons), then you should buy this album which is one of the best down and dirty Chicago Blues albums ever. That's a genre I have spent a lot of time listening to and loving; and it's a singularly world-wise and muscular music that Hammond somehow came to play at a very young age, and not by his skill as an imitator. I was not completely surprised to see another reviewer cite this as both Hammond's and Robbie Robertson's best work; I hadn't realized Roberston was in on the sessions. The singing, playing and production values throughout are alive and blues-infused. This is a fun and soulful album that represents electric blues at its best.

A friend had this album, "I can tell" in 1971 and 1972 and we loved it.
It was lost in a burglary.
I could not find a replacement.

In 1976 my brother in law was independently searching for it.
He asked John Hammond after a concert where he could buy one.
Hammond said, "I don't have any."

Eventually we found a disc jockey with an album that would make us a cassette recording.
But it was mono, scratchy, low fidelity, and had wow and flutter.

I saw Hammond perform in the late 70s.
He started with the song, "My daddy was a jockey and he taught me to ride".
He seemed passionately involved in the performance and never faded.

John Hammond happens to be "white", but that has nothing to do either positively or negatively, with his talent. FYI, he happens to have some black and so-called "mulatto" genealogy via his early American van Salee ancestry. Jackie Kennedy, and Humphrey Bogart were also van Salee descendants, and I don't recall either of them playing killer slide guitar, harmonica, or singing the blues :)