"big Boy"

Although the name may not be familiar to many, Big Boy Pete (aka Pete Miller) has been flogging around the music scene for nearly five decades. He first played in a rock & roll band called the Offbeats, who recorded an EP in 1958, and in 1961, he joined the beat group Peter Jay & the Jaywalkers. With the Jaywalkers, he recorded a number of singles, which were produced by Joe Meek, from whom Pete learned many new and innovative recording techniques. In 1965, he quit the band to concentrate on recording solo projects, and turned to session work to support his recording career. During this period, he became a part-time member of the legendary underground freakbeat band the News, while continuing to write songs for Britain's major publishing houses…

Rice Miller (or Alec or Aleck Miller – everything about this blues great is somewhat of a mystery) probably didn't need to take the name of the original Sonny Boy Williamson (John Lee Williamson) to get noticed, since in many ways he was the better musician, but Miller seemed to revel in confusion, at least when it came to biographical facts, so for whatever reason, blues history has two Sonny Boy Williamsons. Like the first Williamson, Miller was a harmonica player, but he really sounded nothing like his adopted namesake, favoring a light, soaring, almost horn-like sound on the instrument…

With a fun, bright, and wonderful run of hits like "Do You Believe in Magic," "Daydream," and "Summer in the City" behind them, the Lovin' Spoonful began running out of gas by the spring of 1967, and the two albums paired here, You're a Big Boy Now and Everything Playing, both released later that year, show a band that was creatively exhausted. You're a Big Boy Now, the soundtrack to a film written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, did generate a couple of good songs, the title tune and the lovely "Darling Be Home Soon," while Everything Playing yielded the joyous "She Is Still a Mystery" and "Six O'Clock," but these were really the last great gasp of a truly great American band. Serious fans of the group will want to have these for the sake of completion, and this two-fer is a good way to get both of them at once, but taken together, it's a swan song.

This is a superb blues / rock album. It has extremely good music and playing with tight accurate drums and bass, superb guitar work and a voice from Bloater that could open coffins and bring back the dead…