The Blues Bloggers

 This lasts about 54 minutes. 4 tracks feature horns. There are three original Guy tracks. All are great. One- title track, 2- a slow moody instrumental dedicated to Stevie Ray Vaughan, 3-one of Guy's best songs and captures some ferocious guitar playing for 5 minutes and is called Too Broke Too Spend the Night. If you wanted to, you could fit all of these songs into contemporary blues music for either lyrics or music, but only six of the ten tracks fit in a traditional sense. There's 3 slow blues, including the instrumental track called Rememberin' Stevie, the classic Black Night{done by Willie Nelson and Dr. John later}and also Five Long Years another classic covered in Eric Clapton's all blues album From the Cradle. I don't want insult the great musicians on this album, but you could say the only truly remarkable thing about it is Buddy himself. At his top level of playing on this record he is definetely one of the best guitar players in blues. Ups: Alot of powerful vocals. The keyboards are used perfectly, not over or underdone. Let me love you baby is a song that was written by Willie Dixon and one of the last songs Steve Vaughan covered on record and one of Buddy's best recordings. There may be possible downs here for you,though it is all great music. In my opinion the extra guitar players were almost completely unhelpful, and were uneeded at any rate. Of course Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton didn't take anything away but your ears would have to put mine to shame to be able to distinguish them. Jeff Beck was clear but he didn't do anything Guy couldn't do. Bottom line is that these great guitarists were just for promotion and they probably knew it. As for John Porter and Neil Hubbard who are probably in Guy's live band or studio musicians- One or both played on all tracks including the ones with the other guitarists. They were probably only there for the occasional rythm or tiny sound effect or mimicry and really weren't much help even if they did more. They maybe even taking away from Buddy at times. I can't even understand Guy using them. There were back up vocalists in 3 songs which is an uncommon thing in straight blues. Lastly -highly produced and slightly cluttered with people who may not have belonged. The production may bother some blues fans but did however cause some great sound through the record and didn't take away from the character which Guy and the blues is known for. If you are looking for Guy at a more raw hard blues stage then get Stone Crazy which is a standard- Buddy on lead guitar and his brother Phil doing back-up work-then Bass and drums. It's simple and also one of the classic harcore blues albums.

Track list:

1. Damn Right, I've Got The Blues
2. Where Is The Next One Coming From  
3. Five Long Years  
4. Mustang Sally  
5. There Is Something On Your Mind  
6. Early In The Morning  
7. Too Broke To Spend The Night  
8. Black Night  
9. Let Me Love You Baby  
10. Rememberin' Stevie   

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