Customer Reviews

Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions

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

 

 

This is a good disc, with one caveat.

The singing is great, and the rhythm section is world class. These are some of the best songs ever written, and a terrific survey of blues songs/styles. "Dimples" and "Death Letter" are classic performances.

The one caveat is Vernon Reid's guitar playing. I could never tap into the music of "Living Color" -- it always seemed like someone had subtracted the rhythm. On this disc, Vernon tries to play blues guitar, and on a couple of songs he succeeds. On the others, his playing sounds like Ornette Coleman is sitting in while suffering from a middle ear disorder. This is a matter of taste, but it didn't suit me.

In summary, this disc is similar to a blues sampler in the range of the material, all of the songs swing, and the singing is great. Four stars.

I've never listened to much blues music, but I heard this one playing at a record store and had to have it. The sound is raw as if these musicians got together in the studio and just started playing from the hip with the red light on. I don't think they did much in the way of mixing, editing, or second takes. It's not the cleanest, crispest album I've heard but man it is good listening! Without a blues background, I can't really critique this album nor can I compare it to anything I've heard. But I can say that this album has opened a whole new genre in my music library.

What a great CD. This man is a versatile genius! I get tired of people criticizing Blood's vocals - and here he turns in one of his best vocal performances. Blood's South Carolina blues roots come out in this wonderful CD. Vernon Reid and Charles Burnham sound great on here too! I always thought Blood had a lot of Howlin wolf and Muddy Waters in him.

All of these blues classics are interpereted in Blood's unique style. I particularly like the way he gives a nod to much of his avante garde work but still sticks to the blues. One of the best blues CD's of 2001.

Blood turned me onto Hammond B-3 trios when I interviewed him for Guitar Player about ten years ago - that would be a nice follow up to this (hint, hint). This guy is one of the most underated musicians in America today.

Weird--a lot of this is Chicago blues from the pen of Willie Dixon. "Double Trouble" is the Otis Rush classic; "Fattening Frogs for Snakes" is the Sonny Boy Williamson song. Doesn't have a lot to do with Memphis musically or spiritually, in my opinion, but it's good stuff nonetheless. I mean, they don't play it like Memphis guys would and the repertoire itself doesn't much suggest Sun Records or Memphis-style blues. It's Chicago blues as it should be played, full-out, and mostly excellent if occasionally a little boring for my taste. There's some nice guitar but it's not quite adventurous enough from a man who has explored harmolodics with the likes of Coleman and Blythe. On a lot of the classic Chess blues records, Robert Lockwood Jr. plays some really interesting jazzy stuff and you woulda thought Ulmer would have taken that and expanded upon it. There's a certain purity here and lack of detail and definition that I guess is intended as a kind of statement--they just chop away at these tunes. Blood sings pretty well but he isn't quite singer enough to pull off "Double Trouble" or "Evil"; however, this band generates enough momentum to get around that. For the most part this is predictable material that any bunch of fat white guys at Huey's in midtown Memphis would do on a Sunday afternoon. Ulmer does it much better and I guess the point is the predictability of it all. "Death Letter" is a masterpiece and "Too Lazy to Work, Too Nervous to Steal" is charming--sounds kinda like that old Buster Brown version of "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby." Memphis isn't known for blues any more, although there are some exceptions like Alvin Youngblood Hart, and the Fat Possum school of music (from down in the "hill country" southeast of Memphis and east of the Delta) doesn't really have a lot to do with "blues" as it's usually known; the Fat Possum guys are more like atonal one-chord frat-boy whomp, cool if you like that sorta thing, boring if you don't. Nonetheless, sending Ulmer to Sun Studios is an audacious concept that works. I wonder what they think of it down in Memphis. Nicely retrograde in an age when the most commercial music coming out of the Bluff City is rap. How quickly our musical revolutionaries--that rhymes with "millionairies"--age.

This is good enough, but there's not much new going on. Mostly, these are blues oldies, covered a thousand times already. Granted, Ulmer and his band add a nice raucous, irreverent touch, but after "No Escape from the Blues", this seems to be more of a holding pattern.

This is a non-happener, can't see how anyone who's really into the Wolf, Earl or John Lee, Muddy, Magic Sam, et al., would find anything revelatory or even interesting here. The rhythm section doesn't swing at all, just sticks to a heavy-handed predictable rut (can't call it a "groove"). Vocals are Howlin' Wolf-lite -- nothing compelling or suggesting any existential anguish. The version of "Double Trouble" shows what's (not) happening -- naturally, nowhere close to the passion of Otis Rush's original (too much to expect from anyone, I suppose), but neither does it come close to Eric Clapton's version. Some of the guitar and violin playing is quite good, but rendered unlistenable by the generic bombast of the rhythm section. (Sure would be nice to hear a drummer who sounded like he knew something about Fred Below or Francis Clay. . . . ) I dig Blood's playing w/Ornette, Phalanx, Music Revelation Ensemble, Capt. Black, etc., but this is rather superficial. If you want some real depth, I suggest copping a Jimmy Dawkins CD instead.

playing....I like Jeff Healy, John Lee Hooker, and the blues in general so I though a listen through the samples sold this albulm to me. I was not disappointed as I listen throught the whole albulm...a nice flow and fee, his distinct voice and smooth playing bring together an album you can't help but liten to again and again...

Solid and well (over?)produced but ultimately unremarkable. Like Buddy Guy's recent "Sweet Tea", Ullmer is putting himself in a no-win situation. A fine and inventive guitarist, what can he bring to the Chess canon that Robert Lockwood or Hubert Sumlin or Willie Johnson or Pat Hare haven't already accomplished? The answer is not much besides a good-natured delivery, which works well on some songs but fails in others. For example, we don't really get the impression that evil is going on in "Evil", nor do we get the feeling that his woman is really lying on the cooling board in "Death Letter. And do we really need to hear another cover version of "Money?"

Like another reviewer remarked, these are all songs you can hear cranked out by a band of moonlighting dilletante fat white accountants at any faux-blues bar in America on a Friday night. Ullmer plays reverential and straightforward and doesn't really take it to the next level the way you might expect of someone who has played with Rashied Ali and Ornette Coleman.