PROGRAM:? Seward & Hayes:? Big Hip Mamma; Good Boy, Long Way From Home; King Kong Blues; Sweet Woman Blues; Friday The Thirteenth Blues; Sorry Woman Blues; Be Kind Blues; Water Trough Blues; Champion Jack Dupree:? That's All Right With Me; She Can Shake It; Doomed; Rub A Little Boogie; Dennis McMillon:? Goin' Back Home, alternate; Seward & Hayes:? Big Hip Mamma, alternate; Sorry Woman Blues, alternate; Be Kind Blues, alternate; Dennis McMillon:? Goin' Back Home; Blind Willie McTell:? It's My Desire, alternate; River Jordan; How About You; It's My Desire; Hide Me In Thy Bosom?
I picked up this release a couple of days ago.? The cuts were originally recorded for Apollo in 1947, approximately 3 years after the cuts on the Arhoolie release were recorded.? This release suffers by comparison with the Arhoolie release.? Alec Seward and Louis Hayes do not sound as fresh or loose as on the Arhoolie CD.? In addition, several of the cuts have an annoying sound anomaly--I am certainly not an audiophile, I've listened to way too many re-issues of old 78s to fall prey to that, but the sound on a couple of cuts is really bothersome, almost like a metal baseball card stuck in the spokes of a moving bicycle.
In addition to the Seward/Hayes cuts, there are tunes by a Champion Jack Dupree-led unit which included Brownie McGhee (recorded under the name Duke Bayou & His Mystic Six) that are pretty underwhelming.? I confess to never having understood the appeal of Champion Jack's music.? There is also a nice cut by the under-recorded Carolina bluesman, Dennis McMillon, "Goin' Back Home", and five hymns performed by Blind Willie McTell, whose blues performances I much prefer.? All in all, I found this CD a bit disappointing and of the 11 cuts of Seward/Hayes, three are alternate takes with the afore-mentioned buzzing sound.? If you want to hear these guys, the Arhoolie CD is the way to go.
All best,
Johnm?
