Brownie McGhee - Southern Train (2018) [Official Digital Download 24/192]

Consider the music of Walter McGhee, characterized by easy, flowing guitar and the warmest voice in the blues, instantly recognizable. It’s a voice astonishingly rich in texture, although he can give it a cutting edge when the material demands it, and its expressive tonal qualities have even improved over the years, as these 1971 performances show.

Some stop short and others keep going, but a chorus of blues is usually twelve bars long, and it’s become so familiar that the astonishing variety of approaches possible within this seemingly limited framework is often merely taken for granted. Consider Son House, playing driving, repeated bottleneck guitar patterns beneath vocal steeped in the field holler, the mournful majesty of Bessie Smith supported by the more stately blues of ‘20s jazz musicians, and the brash tones of the city echoed by B.B. King’s electric guitar. Consider too the music of Walter McGhee, characterised by easy, flowing guitar and the warmest voice in the blues, instantly recognisable. It’s a voice astonishingly rich in texture, although he can give it a cutting edge when the material demands it, and its expressive tonal qualities have even improved over the years, as these 1971 performances show. …

Tracklist:
01. Southern Train
02. I Can't Sleep at Night
03. Key to the Highway
04. In the Evening When the Sun Goes Down In the Evening
05. We Have No Friends
06. Sporting Life Sporting Life Blues
07. Death of Blind Boy Fuller
08. My Last Suit
09. Howdy Blues
10. Worried Life Blues

Personnel:
Brownie McGhee, vocals, guitar
Sonny Terry, harmonica (on track 6)
Svend-Erik Norregard, drums (on tracks 1 & 9)

Digitally remastered