Customer Reviews

Mystery Train

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Vocalist Junior Paker cut some of the finest blues/R&B records ever laid to wax in the 50's and early 60's and was a dominant influence on legions of blues, R&B, and soul artists-Bobby Bland, Otis Rush, and Al Green, to name a few. Sadly, he remains to this day an unsung hero in a genre of unsung heroes, probabaly because he was never big with white rock musicians. On the upside, the 1990's saw a number of fine Parker compilations released, "Mystery Train" being one of them. "Mystery Train" consists of the brooding title track(yes, later covered by Elvis) and everything else Parker cut for Sam Phillip's Sun label in the early 50's. These tracks are a brilliant hybrid of country and urban blues stylings. Despite uniformly superb performances, these sessions yielded only two R&B chart entries-the aformentioned title track and "Feelin' Good," a John Lee Hooker inspired boogie. Perhaps the finest track from these sessions, though, is "Love My Baby," a wild proto-rockabilly number featuring the nasty, distorted, twin guitar attack of Floyd Murphy and Pat Hare. Hare's punishing fretboard work is also heard to good effect on an included James Cotton Sun single, "Cotton Crop Blues" and Hare's only solo side, the now darkly ironic(it's a long story)"I'm Gonna Murder My Baby." All in all, this music is as powerful and unique as anything cut by any of Sun's more famous artists.

Feelin'good; the best song ever recorde