A Night Of Blistering Blues

It's My Time may be Percy Strother's best record yet, capturing his explosive soul-blues in all of its raging intensity. Truth be told, Strother hasn't really ever given a bad performance on record, but the key to the album's success is that he has a set of terrific original songs which effectively showcase his raging, soulful roar and his blistering guitar. This is raw soul, with little of the slickness that distinguishes latter-day retro-soul – and that's why it's worth hearing.

Recorded live at Marla's Memory Lane Supper Club in Los Angeles, this 1986 date finds Etta James in front of a superb combo fronted by Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, with Red Holloway, Jack McDuff, and Shuggie Otis providing the supple and swinging backdrop. Vinson is featured on "Kidney Stew," "When My Baby Left Me," and "Railroad Porter Blues" before the turning the stage over to Etta, who provides a blistering "Something's Got a Hold on Me" and a sultry three-song medley of "At Last," "Trust Me," and "Sunday Kind of Love." The two stars duet on Percy Mayfield's "Please Send Me Someone to Love" before Etta closes the show with strong readings of "Lover Man" and "Misty." The small crowd's enthusiastic response makes this a show you wish you were there for; this disc is the next best thing to it.

His second album released In 1969 originally on the Monument Label. Produced by the acclaimed Billy Swan. Includes his original version of 'Rainy Night In Georgia', a huge hit for Brook Benton & covered by many including Hank Williams Jr., Shelby Lynne & Randy Crawford.

To call West Side Soul one of the great blues albums, one of the key albums (if not the key album) of modern electric blues is all true, but it tends to diminish and academicize Magic Sam's debut album. This is the inevitable side effect of time, when an album that is decades old enters the history books, but this isn't an album that should be preserved in amber, seen only as an important record. Because this is a record that is exploding with life, a record with so much energy, it doesn't sound old. Of course, part of the reason it sounds so modern is because this is the template for most modern blues, whether it comes from Chicago or elsewhere. Magic Sam may not have been the first to blend uptown soul and urban blues, but he was the first to capture not just the passion of soul, but also its subtle elegance, while retaining the firepower of an after-hours blues joint…