Mody Blues 1970

This is a wonderful CD. Great musicianship, instrumentation, beat. Combo of blues, rock, rock and roll. Can listen to the songs over and over again. Makes you want to get up and dance or at least sway to the beat…

Rare 1970 album produced by Johnny Otis featuring the stinging guitar of his son Shuggie – with two previously unissued bonus tracks Bluesman Slim Green made very few records in a career that started in 1948 and ended with this LP in 1970. Born Norman G. Green in Bryant, Texas in 1920, he grew up in Oklahoma and played guitar in Las Vegas before settling in Los Angeles in the late 1940s. He made his first records in 1948 for local labels. Listening to them suggests a player full of country influences, updating them for a modern urban audience. He reappeared a decade later in a group called the Cats From Fresno, who made two singles for Johnny Otis’ Dig label, a contact he renewed in the late 60s. Johnny Otis, a pioneer of post-war R&B, had scored hits as a producer and recording artist as well as being a renowned talent-spotter. Having dropped out of sight for much of the 1960s, he returned to the studio in the latter part of the decade and released a series of records for the Kent label, distinguished by the guitar playing of his teenage son Shuggie.

Ringo Starr had a demonstrated affinity for country music, as heard on such Beatles recordings as "Act Naturally," and he sounded as modestly comfortable on this Nashville-recorded session as in any other musical context. The cream of the city's session players backed up the former Beatle on a set of newly written songs, and the result was a typical country effort, pleasant as long as you didn't expect too much…

The mid-to-late Sixties was a strange and difficult time for many Blues men - most were without contracts, forgotten and under-appreciated. Then the Blues boom happened (particularly in the UK) and many had their careers kick-started all over again. Freddie King was no exception. His last album had been for Federal in 1964, but with a new lease of life on the mighty Atlantic label, he produced two much revered LPs in rapid succession. The first was "Freddie King Is A Blues Master" released in 1969 on SD 9004 - and then this peach - "My Feeling For The Blues" on Cotillion SD 9016 released in early 1970.

The final Canned Heat album to feature co-founder Alan Wilson, Future Blues was also one of their best, surprisingly restrained as a studio creation by the band, the whole thing clocking in at under 36 minutes, as long as some single jams on their live discs. It was also one of their most stylistically diverse efforts. Most of what's here is very concise and accessible, even the one group-composed jam - Alan Wilson's "Shake It and Break It" and his prophetically titled "My Time Ain't Long" (he would be dead the year this record was issued), which also sounds a lot like a follow-up to "Going up the Country" until its final, very heavy, and up-close guitar coda. Other songs are a little self-consciously heavy, especially their version of Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right, Mama"…