Up! Up You June 1999

At the time of this recording, John Primer had already established himself on the who’s who list of Chicago blues. He had finished a long stint with Muddy Waters and was in the middle of a 14 year stay as guitarist for Magic Slim and the Teardrops. This CD is John's fourth for Wolf Records and his very first full-length live album.
After the Wolf Records manager listened to the Zoo Bar recordings he got the idea to make a CD just with John Primer, because he always opened every set at the Zoo Bar and it was great! So the musicians here are just Nick Holt on bass, Michael Scott on drums and John himself! The three had a great sound and played songs like "Gambler's Blues", "Easy Baby" and "Walkin' through the Park"! Great!

In the summer of 1956, the famed Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell arranged for Dizzy Gillespie to embark on a worldwide goodwill-ambassador tour sponsored by the State Department. Gillespie and an all-star big band featuring trumpeter Quincy Jones, the late trombonist Melba Liston, alto saxophonist Phil Woods, and tenor saxophonist Benny Golson performed in Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil to frenzied, beret-wearing fans. Recordings were made but they weren't commercially available and were played only for a select group of musicians before Gillespie's death in 1993. Now the sides have been released, showcasing Dizzy at his bebopping best.

For over 30 years, Charlie Musselwhite has released consistent, if not classic, blues albums in the great Chicago tradition. An acknowledged master of the harmonica, Musselwhite's rough voice is also a recognizable aural trait, and on Continental Drifter he uses both to evoke a world weariness. In the same way a bluesman might rootlessly travel from town to town, the swinging melodies of songs like "Edge of Mystery" and "No" seem to drift and amble musically. Though it's not one of his best efforts, the album – which also has Musselwhite dabbling with Tex-Mex on two tracks – is a solid offering.

Here's the guy everybody knows for his monster rock/reggae/electro hit "Electric Avenue." What did he ever do after that? Almost nobody knows, and that's what this Music Club collection attempts to inform the world of for a budget price. Personally, I love Music Club reissues; they are priced super reasonably, they have lovely packages that feature enough tracks to give a representative sample with a few rarities tossed in, and they offer an adequate set of liner notes to educate the listener. This is helpful in the case of Grant, who, at least in the U.S., is a one-hit MTV wonder. Eddy Grant had an awesome band of rockers and soulsters together in the 1960s called the Equals who had a string of modest British hits – including "Police on My Back" – that everybody identifies with the Clash.