Mississippi Soul

Slick Ballinger | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 14, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Oh Boy
• ASIN: B000E6TZM4
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #378,538 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

About the Artist

One might say that the Mississippi River runs through his veins. Certainly the spirit of traditional blues is the lifeblood of 21 year-old Daniel "Slick" Ballinger. Influenced by the likes of Howlin Wolf and Muddy Waters, the North Carolina native and current Mississippi resident picked up the guitar at the age of fifteen and with it took the torch from a bygone generation and began to run with it.

Before he turned eighteen, Ballinger was honored to share the stage with the likes of Othar Turner and Pinetop Perkins, and more recently with the legendary BB King. During the summer of 2002, a 94 year-old Turner took the young Ballinger under his wing and taught him how to live and breathe the blues, in a house with no electricity or running water. Turner was the last surviving master of the Mississippi back-country fife-and-drum tradition, a primitive take on African-American songs which dates back to the Northern Mississippi hill country culture of the 1800s. Living under such conditions is likely to drive a modern man crazy, but not when you are a young bluesman with an old soul like Ballinger. He and Turner rose early each day and led a simple routine of chores, followed by traveling the gravel roads of Mississippi to perform at juke joints and house parties.

The young Ballinger could never have imagined a better education, though he is truly humble and does not see himself as a prodigy. "Everybody does something well," he says. "For me, it’s playing the blues. I can make the people of Mississippi jump up and shout, and they know something about the blues."

Ballinger won the Albert King Award in 2004 for "Most Promising Guitarist" at the 2004 International Blues Challenge. Now, after a few years of becoming friendly with the road, Ballinger is set to release his debut on Oh Boy Records, a Nashville-based label that is home to singer/songwriter John Prine. The new record was produced by Jim Gaines (Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, George Thorogood, Steve Miller Band, Journey, John Lee Hooker). Ballinger refers to Gaines as a "genius," saying that the renowned producer was able to capture the raw energy of Ballinger’s live sound.

Slick Ballinger is a young man with simple values, and sets out to make his music reflect that. His gruff but soulful voice and string-snapping guitar style are proof that old-school Delta blues can not only be taught, but can be truly learned and transferred to a new generation.

"All of the great artists that ever been, went down in history because of the simplicity of it," Ballinger says. "Like Chuck Berry." He pauses, then, like a wise old man, adds a simple sentiment that is the mantra of the young bluesman’s life.

"Ain’t no use in making things complicated," he says.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars missing soul, but slickness a plenty..., February 10, 2009

By 

Diamond Dave (Chicago, Home of the Blues) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mississippi Soul (Audio CD)

This came highly recommended to me from a blues friend. We are still friends, but I was thoughroughly disappointed in this. I can listen to just about any thing, but could barely make it thru most of these tracks. I'd give it a 3 Stars for the playing which was fine, nothing speacial on harp or gtr. I'm not a huge delta blues fan for starters so maybe this was just a bad mix for me. Vocally, he makes Johnny Winter sound like Pavaratti. It's like they took Slick, grabbed him by the short hairs, and forced him to sing those skretching lines at gun point. 1 star for the singing, and I'm being generous. I know you don't have to be a great singer (Dylan) to be a great, but wow this was unsavory bad. If this were heavy metal they would call him a "poser". Yammering on about not being a white person or a black person, but a real person and ranting on about jesus and the blues. Please... The worst CD of it's ilk.
Should come with the caption:
Warning - you are about to enter a snooze zone.

JOHN CAMPBELL, for example, would be a far more authentic slide guitarist with an adaquite voice to listen to, if you are going down this dusty delta road.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A review I've been waiting to do for four years., March 19, 2006

By 

R. Shaw - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mississippi Soul (Audio CD)

Mississippi Soul

I've been anxious to write up Slick's first bona fide cd ever since I saw him playing on Beale Street four years ago, while in Memphis during Handy weekend. He stopped people in their tracks then and is still doing it today, except these days there's a lot more people getting exposed to him and his brand of old style, countrified, Mississippi blues. Also, he was only 17 back then and now he's 21. He had a demo at that time and it blew people's minds but he's aged a little since then, picked up more than a couple new licks and has a regular band to back him as he carries his audience through a world of Sugar Mommas, Bull Cows, sleeping dogs, and the Soul that inhabits the Holy Land where blues began. This album is a testament to that very spirit that is there still, "deep down in the country".

Songs like Brotherhood Blues, Let's Get Down and Juke House Blues, as well as the title track Mississippi Soul, exhort you to get up off your butts and start moving them rather than sitting on them. All are hard driving ass shakers with jackhammer percussion from North Carolina drummer, Leon Baker and the indefatigable Blind Mississippi Morris on harmonica. I've seen Slick and the band go on for half an hour or more in clubs doing this high energy material, never stopping until at least three strings have snapped off his guitar. They kept the versions on the record down to a respectable four or five minutes and somehow finished before breaking anything, that I could hear anyhow. Jim Gaines, who recorded these sessions at his rural Tennessee studio, has captured the raw, electrified passion that this band delivers in the clubs and on the festival circuit.
"You Don't Love Me", Muddy's "Rosalie", "Bull Cow" and "Slow Down" give the listener a chance to catch their breath and grab a cold drink. These are the gutbucket, the lowest of lowdown blues at their finest.

By the way, there is no bassist playing on any of the tracks. And there aren't any zillion note a minute guitar riffs going on either. Just hard driving hooks that will drag you right on into the boat and onto the stringer. Slick's blues probably won't sound like any Chicago, West Coast, Texas, or Swing blues that you've been exposed to prior to this. Nope, Slick's blues take you back, "Deep down in the country"to the kudzu laden trees and fence rows of Mississippi, to sweltering hot days and nights at picnics, reunions, and house partys out "there"....where things are different and hard and still very goddamned real.

R.Shaw (Tweed)
http://tweedsblues.net

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PURE JUKEJOINT SOUL!, March 18, 2006

By 

W. Eric Schwoebel (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mississippi Soul (Audio CD)

Wow. The pure emotive power, soul--and plain joy--in the voice of young bluesman Slick Ballinger has kept my car rockin' for days now. This is a juke joint rave-up that amps the blues like nothing I've heard in many, many years.

Slick's powerful shoutin' and moanin' vocals and virtuoso guitar work team with the Leon Baker's ace drumming and Blind Mississippi Morris's soulful, heartfelt harp to create a propulsive rhythm that drove me straight to a Friday-night juke joint party. Title track Mississippi Soul, along with Let's Get Down, and Juke House Blues conjure up a steamy, swampy blues party that just plain jumps with joy.

There's some seriously fine deep blues here, too, in Rosalie, Sugar Mama Blues, and Bull Cow Blues. And impressively for such a young guy, Slick has written five of the ten tunes here and co-written a sixth. Not counting a bonus track that is a very special treat, indeed (I'll just say that if you need a little redemption the night after, your ticket is right here in this track).

A big nod to Jim Gaines here, too, for producing a great sound: clean and gritty-soulful, all at once.

Slick opened twice for B.B. King in the past year and there's a good reason, as the quote from B.B. himself on the front of this cd attests: "...That young man is an entertainer...He's keeping the blues moving forward while respecting the past." Entertainer, indeed: I've seen Slick perform live and there is no one quite like him. If he comes to your town, see for yourself. You will have a big grin on your face at the end of the night, no lie.

Now I'm cranking up this cd to get back to the party. You oughta join me!