Golden Gate Grooves, January 2014
Golden Gate Grooves, January 2014 CD REVIEWS Billy Boy Arnold, Charlie Musselwhite, The singers/harmonica players under whose names Remembering Little Walter was issued are an enviable Mark Hummel, Sugar Ray Norcia, James all-star assemblage: Hummel, Harman, Charlie Harman, Remembering Little Walter Musselwhite, Billy Boy Arnold, and Sugar Ray Norcia. Together they make up something like 50% of any by Tom Hyslop reasonable person’s list of the pre-eminent living Latter-day harp men talk harmonica players, and the environment, as one might about Big Walter’s tone, expect, makes for committed and spirited emulate the conversational performances. Sugar Ray’s intense “Mean Old World” is styles of both Sonny Boys, dynamite, as is Musselwhite’s take on the up-tempo admire the power and “One Of These Mornings,” a relative rarity, which also playfulness of Cotton, and features a daredevil guitar break. Tone and dynamics dig Junior Wells’s attitude. are at an impossibly high level throughout—Hummel Some may work on Jimmy and the band dial in a perfect late-night mood on “Blue Reed’s high-end approach, Light,” and the way Harman drives “Crazy Mixed Up or give lip service to Snooky World” hard before breaking it down to a whisper at Pryor or even Louis Myers. But Marion Walter Jacobs the end is masterly. Billy Boy’s “Can’t Hold Out Much was The Man, the player whose stylistic innovations Longer” is splendid on every level. revolutionized the way the instrument was played, and whose technique, taste, and tones continue to baffle That recaps only about half of the program, but the rest and inspire musicians more than 60 years after his of the songs (each performer sings two) are excellent as debut, and nearly 45 years after his untimely death.
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