Customer Reviews

This What I Do

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

 

 

This album is simply amazing. I first heard it on a blues radio show on KKFI in Kansas City one Saturday morning. I was having coffee and reading the paper. They played the entire album and as each song began it seized my attention from the news. Fresh arrangements, interesting beats and choices of percussion, and fine musicianship with something for any listener. Sir Mack has created a fusion of blues, gospel, and traditional R&B that drew me in completely. As a blues lover, it never strayed too far from the blues but was clearly something more. I immediately found the CD and purchased it. It is now in my top 25 CD collection along with works by Stevie Ray, Roy Roger, and the Rolling Stones best blues effort, Let It Bleed. If you want something bluesy yet fresh and original, this is it.

Forget genres - but if you must categorize, think Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. This music has bounce, slyness, intelligence, heart, grit, subtlety AND drive. The guitar-driven arrangements remind you that Chicago-style blues is a basic classical tradition. But this isn't blues. Nor is it a tour around the museum for oldies fans. Check out "Mustang Sally" - as fresh and punchy and sexy as if it were written yesterday, but unmistakeably the same song Wilson Pickett sang a generation ago. What I am groping for is a way to communicate just how much life there is in this music, and how connected it is to the traditions it springs from and revivifies. Sometimes I listen to Beethoven's late string quartets, and sometimes I listen to this. They come from the same deep place. I'd have to say that Mack Rice is better for dancing, though.

Hard to say who influences who but this recording is great with definite inspiration from the Stones, Pickett, and many others. Very enjoyable listening, very good production/engineering qualities, and some very fine musicianship. Sir Mack Rice never really made the big time, other than writing the classic Mustang Sally, but he sures deserves wider recognition.