Customer Reviews

Midnight Son

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Son delivers a most excellent performance on this album. His gritty raw guitar style sends chills up my spine everytime I listen to it. He seems to pull hot steamy tones from the inner depths of his soul and pushes the whole thing over the top with his low down growling voice. The entire package is total blues dynamite as only Son Seals can deliver. This album is a must have for any blues guitar lover. Tons of cool licks to steal for the guitarist in the bunch as well as many cool grooves to jam with.

Armed with a huge, gruff voice and a searing, rough-edged guitar attack, Frank "Son" Seals was one of the finest blues and R&B-performers of the 60s and 70s Chicago scene, and this 1976 album, comprised almost solely of self-penned material, is one of his two or three best records.

He is backed by the standard four-piece band, second guitar, bass, drums and keyboards, and by a small, punchy horn ensemble (trumpet, trombone and a tenor sax). The interplay between the horns and Seals' gritty lead guitar is absolutely excellent, and just listen to that funky backbeat laid down by the rhythm section on songs like "On My Knees", "No, No Baby" and "Don't Bother Me"!

"Midnight Son" produced a number of Son Seals standards, songs which remained in his live repertoire for decades, and the arrangements are uniformly excellent. "Don't Bother Me" is propelled by a meaty horn riff and some rollicking R&B piano, and Seals gets off a sizzling solo, same as on the classic slow grind of "Telephone Angel" and the driving, up-tempo "Don't Fool With My Baby".

Other highlight include the up-tempo "Strung Out Woman" and the jumping soul-blues-stomper "Four Full Seasons Of Love"...but it really doesn't make sense to talk about highlights on an album which isn't anything but.
Get this one, along with his self-titled Alligator records debut, and the powerhouse "Nothing But the Truth", and take it from there! This is a fine, fine latter-day Chicago blues record.

Midnight Son was the album that garnered attention to Son Seals, and thirty years later, it's still evident what the fuss was about.

Seals scorches the earth with his playing. "Going Back Home" is an alltime classic, with the guitar seeming to be as sad as Seals is as his tells his hard-luck story. "Telephone Angel" also delivers tasty guitar licks that seem to indicate joy just as much as "Going Back Home" indicates sadness.

Diabetes took a great talent from us way too soon. But Midnight Son remains a testament to the great blues he put down while he was here.

This is one of my all time favorite blues CDs. I could listen to "Going Back Home" over and over again. The power in his guitar are matched by very few.

Son Seals Midnight Son combines upbeat R&B with Chicago styles blues. As a result, The Son Seals Blues Band comes off sounding like the love child of Ray Charles and Freddie King. This album exemplifies much of the work Son did. He walked, talked, lived, and played the blues. Many of the song titles and musical narratives reflect this personal side which he brought to his song writing, and adds to the feel and emotion of his work. If you like the work of bluesmen such as Albert King and Buddy Guy with a horn-filled upbeat jazzy, R&B feel then this is the album for you...