Archive Review: Rory Gallagher’s Notes From San Francisco (2011)

By late 1977, Irish blues-rock guitarist Rory Gallagher had delivered six studio albums in as many years, and had toured constantly during the interim. After completing a particularly grueling six-month tour that finished in Japan, Gallagher and band flew back to San Francisco to record a new album with producer Elliot Mazer (who helmed Big Brother & the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills album with Janis Joplin).

After a couple months of intense and difficult recording, the guitarist deemed the final mixing process to be “too complicated” when it obviously wasn’t getting anywhere, and he put the entire album on the shelf, subsequently breaking up his band of five years in the process. In early 2011, Gallagher’s nephew Daniel, son of Rory’s brother and manager Donal Gallagher, rescued these unreleased recordings from the archives after 34 years and remixed the album that would have been released between 1976’s Calling Card and 1978’s Photo-Finish. Recorded with a four-piece band, the album’s nine songs are Gallagher originals, around half of which would be re-recorded in different form with a three-piece band for Photo-Finish.

Rory Gallagher’s Notes From San Francisco

The question on everybody’s mind, of course, is Notes From San Francisco worth the wait? Yes, I’d have to say that it was. While Gallagher may have had an inordinate amount of trouble trying to get the performances to sound like he wanted during the mixing process, Daniel Gallagher’s nuanced mix – performed with modern equipment, of course – brings out facets of the guitarist and band’s performances that the primitive late-1970s technology overlooked. The album-opening “Rue the Day,” for instance, offers up some tasty honky-tonk piano running like a river beneath Gallagher’s twangy leads and roaring vocals. Martin Fiero’s blasts of sax help round out the sound, which is revved-up boogie-rock evoking 1970s-era Rolling Stones.

Only hardcore fans of Gallagher’s bootleg albums have heard “B Girl,” but for everybody else, it’s a new song, and a good ‘un at that. With a sleazy guitar riff circling in and out of the mix, the band lays down a fat, funky rhythm that dances beneath Gallagher’s comparatively gruff, whiskey-soaked vocals. It’s this contrast, between the guitarist’s dark-hued vocals and the band’s bright instrumentation that makes the song truly shine. A long-time live favorite, “Mississippi Sheiks” would be re-recorded by Gallagher for Photo-Finish, but it’s performed here with a different arrangement. Gallagher’s stunning guitar intro and the band’s stammering rhythms are akin to the sort of blues-derived hard rock pursued by Savoy Brown or Status Quo. But what sets this performance apart from all the others is the addition of Joe O’Donnell’s lively electric violin, which provides the song with an otherworldly, soulful vibe.

Wheels Within Wheels

Notes From San Francisco includes two different versions of the popular Gallagher song “Wheels Within Wheels,” the first being a gentle MOR radio ballad with touching vocals and Lou Martin’s rolling piano-play, while the second, alternate version is delivered at the same mid-tempo pace, but with a bluesier inflection in both the vocals and in Gallagher’s fretwork and with less emphasis on piano, sounding like a 1980s-era Eric Clapton ballad but with more heart and soul. Another track that would appear on Photo-Finish, “Brute Force & Ignorance,” lives up to its title with a muscular, bludgeoning performance with crashing drumbeats, brickhouse bass lines, and scorched-earth guitar. Fiero’s sax makes another appearance here, lending a bit of R&B feel behind Gallagher’s weeping, soaring guitar solo.
 
One of the lesser-known Photo-Finish tracks, “Fuel To the Fire” represents another outlier in Gallagher’s musical evolution. With sparse, but strong instrumentation behind his mournful vocals, Gallagher’s atypical fretwork finds him pursuing a less bluesy, more rock ‘n’ roll oriented sound with jazzy undertones and some odd, invigorating phrasing and extended solos that are simply beautiful. The album also includes two “bonus tracks,” including the previously-unreleased or re-recorded “Out On the Tiles,” a wildcat rocker with locomotive rhythms and a scattergun approach, Gallagher’s guitar spitting out notes with reckless abandon, razor-sharp tone accompanied by blistering speed and joyful chaos.

Live In San Francisco

Notes From San Francisco includes a second live disc, culled from a December 1979 performance at The Old Waldorf. Fronting the power trio had recorded Photo Finish, Gallagher leads longtime bassist McAvoy and drummer Ted McKenna through a set that includes a mix of the old and new material. Crowd favorites like the raucous “Shinkicker” and “Off the Handle” are perfect showcases for Gallagher’s onstage charisma and dynamic guitarplay, while old chestnuts like the soulful “Tattoo’d Lady” and “Calling Card” are provided new vigor by Gallagher’s incendiary fretwork and the band’s muscular backing rhythms.  

A handful of tracks from the live portion of Notes From San Francisco stand out in particular from Gallagher’s previous (and frequent) live sets. One is a performance of “Bullfrog Blues,” from the guitarist’s early British blues-rock band Taste. Revving up the tempo, Gallagher and band crank out an unabashed boogie blast with machinegun drumbeats and flamethrower guitar licks. The concert rarity “I’m Leavin’“ is another up-tempo raver with brokeback drums, rapidfire vocals, and raging fretwork all delivered with punkish intensity, while a cover of the 1950s rock ‘n’ roll gem “Sea Cruise” is amped-up and ramped-up from the original but manages to capture the restless, rockin’ soul of the song nonetheless.     

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Although collections such as Notes From San Francisco are typically aimed at a collector audience that eagerly grab up everything new or novel from a musician, in this instance this two-disc set serves as an excellent introduction to an underrated and too-often overlooked blues-rock talent. Gallagher’s guitar rages like an out-of-control wildfire throughout these studio tracks, and roars like a jet fighter on a bombing run in the live setting.

While hardcore Rory Gallagher fans will eat this stuff up, Notes From San Francisco is more than a mere musical curiosity. The album stands on its own as both a studio recording and a live document, and it would have been welcome had it been released in 1978 as planned. As such, its current release represents an important and impressive addition to the guitarist’s growing legacy. (Eagle Records, released May 17th, 2011)

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Archive Review: Rory Gallagher’s The Beat Club Sessions (2010)

If not exactly a contemporary of British blues-rock guitarists like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, Ireland’s Rory Gallagher came of age in the wake of trailblazers like the Yardbirds and Cream. From the time of Gallagher’s band Taste’s 1969 self-titled debut album, through an acclaimed solo career that began in 1971 and resulted in over a dozen albums until Gallagher’s tragic death in 1995, the guitarist earned a well-deserved reputation for powerful guitarplay; gruff, soulful vocals; and a skilled manipulation of blues and rock music that easily rivaled that of Clapton and Page as well as peers like Gary Moore and Mick Taylor.

Interest in Rory Gallagher and his music continues to grow some 15 years after his death and, luckily for us punters, there seems to be a deep well of archive material being brought up by bucket and chain and trickled into the marketplace on compact disc and DVD. Gallagher’s The Beat Club Sessions represents a new high in the guitarist’s growing catalog, a dozen white-hot performances that burn brighter than phosphorus, blasting through the eardrums to rattle around in the brain like a maddening sustain. Recorded during three of Gallagher’s frequent appearances on the German television program The Beat Club, the album (and accompanying DVD) features material culled from Gallagher’s 1971 debut and that year’s follow-up Deuce, as well as a couple of choice covers, like the guitarist’s signature romp through Junior Well’s “Messin’ With the Kid.”

Rory Gallagher’s The Beat Club Sessions

The Beat Club Sessions opens with the lively “Laundromat,” a scalding hot tater that jumps around like a lobster in a pot. Gallagher’s guitar playing here is positively stunning, flowing effortlessly from raw scraped rhythms to jazz-inflected solos, his gravel-throated vocals almost an afterthought in the face of the song’s massive groove. Gallagher’s “Sinnerboy,” from his album, is a horse of an entirely different color. The intro offers up some delicate guitar picking, Gallagher’s vocals complimented by shimmering cymbals before he cuts loose with a muscular, bluesy rhythm that leads into a taut solo that cuts like a razor. Contrasting with these scorchers is the long-time Gallagher favorite “I Don’t Know Where I’m Going,” an acoustic blues number with a little Delta mud in the grooves, Gallagher’s subdued guitar strum matched by his warbling harmonica work.

The serpentine slide-guitar that introduces “I Could’ve Had Religion,” from the album, opens the door to a smoky, down-n-dirty sin-and-salvation tale that sounds like Robert Johnson with an Irish lilt to his voice. The song stomps and stammers out of your speakers like a hungry beast, a change in fortunes from Johnson’s hellhounds as the song’s protagonist willingly chooses the dark side. Gallagher’s slide-guitar runs wild through the song like a jolt of electricity guaranteed to tickle the fancy of any blues-rock fanboy. “Used To Be” is another long-time live fave, a raucous houserocker a la Cream, Gallagher using the power-trio format to its fullest, the song bristling with electric guitar riffs and crashing rhythms.

Crest of A Wave

The rollicking “In Your Town” shows just the slightest hint of Chicago blues in its deep rhythmic groove, Gallagher almost shouting his vox above the din, an aural assault partially created by his flamethrower fretwork. The song’s rapid pace is propelled by drummer Wilgar Campbell’s incessant percussive percussion and bassist Gerry McAvoy’s heavy bass-work. Again, Gallagher’s squealing guitarplay tortures the arrangement with a black cat moan and a spine-shaking intensity.

Gallagher’s “Crest of A Wave” is one of his signature tunes, a lyrically and musically epic song that offers ringing, circular guitar, strident vocals, a rock-solid rhythmic backbone, and a leather-tuff solo that soars like a bird of prey. Gallagher’s cover of Junior Wells’ “Messin’ With the Kid” may be absent the master’s powerful harp playing, but the guitarist claimed equal ownership of the song with soulful vocals and an inspired, fleet-fingered bit of guitarplay. McAvoy’s bass solo here is a thing of beauty, while Campbell’s drum solo adds a bit of bluster to the song’s braggadocio, but it’s Gallagher’s wailing solos that steal the spotlight.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Rory Gallagher fans have long known of the man’s immense talents as a guitarist and a performer, but he remains one of the best-kept secrets in blues-rock music. Gallagher arrived late to the party, perhaps, the British blues scene already moving on to harder-edged rock by the time that the guitarist made his debut. Still, as these early performances from the dawn of his career show, Gallagher had the skills, the heart, and the soul to deliver emotional, moving blues-rock music that connected with the listener.

That he never found a larger audience is an oversight that The Beat Club Sessions can help correct. These twelve powerful performances showcase a guitarist at beginning of a substantial career, full of vigor and brimming over with ideas, both musical and lyrical. That Gallagher’s long-time fans will grab up The Beat Club Sessions is no surprise, but the album would also make an intoxicating introduction to the man and his music for the newcomer. (Eagle Records, released September 14th, 2010)

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Archive Review: Long John Baldry's Everything Stops For Tea (1972)

Following up on the modest success of 1971’s It Ain’t Easy album, which spawned a chart-scraping minor AOR radio hit in “Don’t Try To Lay No Boogie Woogie On the King of Rock & Roll,” British blues-rock icon Long John Baldry went back to the same well for his 1972 album Everything Stops For Tea. While the previous year’s effort represented a return to the blues for Baldry, who had enjoyed a string of pop ballads in the U.K. during the late 1960s, Everything Stops For Tea reached further back into the singer’s history, incorporating elements of British folk and R&B alongside Baldry’s usual mix of blues and rock music.

Baldry again enlisted the help of long-time friends and former bandmates Rod Stewart and Elton John to produce the new album. The first time around, Stewart’s productions were featured on side one of the original vinyl LP release, while John’s work was featured on side two. With Everything Stops For Tea, however, John’s production shines clearly on the first side, while Stewart’s seemingly rushed efforts hold down side two. Whereas on the first album, the best performances spanned the entire disc, here the highlights mostly come from John’s side, which offers up an inspired mix of material. Like with the previous album, an all-star cast of musicians was used, John utilizing his road-tested touring band, including guitarist Davey Johnstone, while Stewart used friends and former bandmates like the underrated guitarist Sam Mitchell, and Jeff Beck Group drummer Mickey Waller.  

Long John Baldry’s Everything Stops For Tea

Opening with the folksy “Come Back Again,” Baldry’s twangy vocals sound uncannily like a cross between the Band’s Levon Helm and singer Leon Redbone. Johnstone’s guitar playing is superb here, capturing a Nashville country vibe without discarding Australian songwriter Ross Wilson’s original folk-blues roots. Baldry cranks it up for a raucous, R&B styled cover of Willie Dixon’s blues classic “Seventh Son.” Johnstone adds gospel-tinged piano and slinky guitar here while John Lennon cohort Klaus Voorman unwinds a deep, funky bass line for drummer Nigel Olssen to punctuate with his subtle percussion. Baldry is joined by John on backing vocals for the traditional folk standard “Wild Mountain Thyme,” the singer really nailing the song’s winsome lyrics with a fine vocal performance which is assisted by Johnstone’s spry mandolin picking.  

One of John’s most inspired song choices for the album can be found in the New Orleans classic “Iko Iko,” which Baldry delivers with reckless aplomb. The performance starts out low and slow, just Ray Cooper’s syncopated percussion and Baldry’s quiet vocals, before the volume and the temperature rises and the singer starts jumping ‘n’ jiving above a soundtrack that features Johnstone’s banjo and Olssen’s lively drumbeats. Altogether, they capture the sound and spirit of New Orleans R&B in a little recording studio in London. “Jubilee Cloud” is the last of the five John-produced tracks, the song a rollicking bit of blues-rock with folkish undertones driven by Ian Armit’s honky-tonk piano and a solid Voorman/Olssen rhythmic backbone. Baldry delivers a strong, Southern soul styled vocal performance while Cooper throws in a bit of chaotic percussion.  

You Can’t Judge A Book By The Cover

The Stewart side opens with the comedic title track, itself introduced by an odd, entirely British spoken word bit before rolling into Baldry’s old-school crooning. It sounds a little strange to American ears, but I’m sure the U.K. audience adored it at the time. Not to be outdone by his colleague John, Stewart throws in his own Willie Dixon song, the boogie-woogie favorite “You Can’t Judge A Book (By the Cover),” originally a hit for the great Bo Diddley. Baldry does the song right, knocking out an energetic performance with improvised lyrical asides, backed by Armit’s manic piano-pounding and part-time Fleetwood Mac guitarist Bob Weston’s serpentine fretwork. The other highlight of side two is Baldry’s take on the traditional British folk tune “Mother Ain’t Dead,” which features a sublime performance by the singer on guitar, accompanied only by Stewart on banjo and backing vocals.

This CD reissue includes a number of bonus tracks, including two radio spots produced by Warner Brothers to originally advertise the album. More interesting is a live performance of Baldry’s original “Bring My Baby Back To Me” from the 1972 Mar-Y-Sol Festival in Puerto Rico. An unabashed electric blues song with a suspiciously hypnotic circular guitar riff (think Hill Country and R.L. Burnside), Baldry channels his best Howlin’ Wolf Delta blues growl above the scorching fretwork and swaggering drumbeats. A haunting cover of Neil Young’s melancholy “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” (mistakenly credited to Leadbelly?) features singer Joyce Everson, as does the folk-blues rave-up “I’m Just A Rake & Ramblin’ Boy,” which features a beautiful duet between the two singers above Baldry’s nuanced acoustic guitar.  

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Less bluesy and spontaneous, perhaps, than It Ain’t Easy, the following year’s Everything Stops For Tea nevertheless has its moments. Baldry’s voice is in fine form, the backing musicians are definitely inspired, and Elton John’s production, in particular, is subtle yet confident. These two early 1970s albums, originally released by Warner Brothers Records, represent the cornerstone of Baldry’s immense musical legacy in England, and provided the singer with a modicum of commercial success and popularity in both the United States and Canada. Both albums are highly recommended for the curious who want a taste of this talented and admittedly eclectic artist. (Stony Plain Records, released April 24, 2012)

Also on That Devil Music: Long John Baldry's It Ain't Easy album review

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Archive Review: Long John Baldry’s It Ain’t Easy (1971)

An influential veteran of the early 1960s British blues-rock scene, Long John Baldry performed with and/or inspired nearly every musician of note on the island. The popular singer and songwriter had been a large part of two essential and seminal bands of the era, Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated and Cyril Davies’ R&B All Stars, and had led Long John Baldry and His Hoochie Coochie Men with lead singer Rod Stewart, and Bluesology, which featured future pop star Elton John.

During the late 1960s, however, Baldry strayed from the blues and blues-rock music with which he’d made his reputation in favor of pop ballads that provided minor chart hits. By 1971, the singer’s career had stalled, and with the help of old friends Stewart and John, Baldry made a successful return to the blues with It Ain’t Easy. With one side of the original album produced by Rod Stewart and the other side produced by Elton John, It Ain’t Easy featured Baldry performing alongside some of the best and brightest musicians that England had to offer, including guitarist Ron Wood, Stewart’s bandmate in the Faces and a future Rolling Stones member; guitarist Caleb Quaye, from Elton John’s band; and Jeff Beck Group drummer Mickey Waller, among others.

Long John Baldry’s It Ain’t Easy

It Ain’t Easy starts off with an odd little spoken-word intro titled “Conditional Discharge.” Part reminiscence, part stream-of-consciousness rant, Baldry’s low-key voice is accompanied by Ian Armit’s spirited boogie-woogie piano-pounding. The piece serves as the perfect opening for the raucous “Don’t Try To Lay No Boogie Woogie On the King Of Rock & Roll.” With Ron Wood laying down a smoking guitar riff, Baldry’s howling, growling vocals strut and swagger atop the instrumentation, Waller’s powerful drumbeats driving the song alongside blasts from Alan Skidmore’s saxophone and Sam Mitchell’s guitar, Baldry’s vocals doubled-and-tripled by a female vocal chorus. It’s a heady way to launch the album, resulting in a minor AOR radio hit that pushed the album into the Billboard Top 100.

There’s more to It Ain’t Easy than the aforementioned house-rocker, though, Baldry performing a duet, of sorts, with fellow British blues singer Maggie Bell (Stone the Crows) on Leadbelly’s classic “Black Girl.” The performance is rife with slinky, Delta-inspired stringwork, Baldry playing a 12-string guitar alongside Mitchell’s weeping Dobro steel guitar and Ray Jackson’s spry mandolin. Baldry and Bell’s vocals are dirty, drawling, and often overwhelmed by the chaotic instrumentation – a delightful mess, really, contemporizing the antique song while paying proper reverence to its origins. The album’s title track is delivered in a similar Mississippi blues vein, with a bit of gospel fever thrown in for good measure, Baldry’s soulful, shouted vocals bolstered by Bell’s harmonies, accompanied by Mitchell’s Dobro and Wood’s hot git licks.

Rock Me When He’s Gone

Baldry’s cover of the folkish “Morning, Morning,” written by Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs, may seem an obscure and unlikely choice, but Baldry’s wistful, mourning vocals and Woods’ 12-string plucking bring a bittersweet measure to the song, which mixes folk, rock, and blues to its maximum emotional impact. Blues legend Willie Dixon’s classic “I’m Ready” is spruced up and jacked up by this British blues-rock crew, the song’s original Chicago blues strut amplified by a rowdy instrumental arrangement built around Baldry’s gruff vocals and Mitchell’s Delta-dirty slide-guitarwork. Armitt throws in some Otis Spann-inspired juke-joint piano, and as they say in Merry Ole England, “Bob’s yer uncle!”  
    
Elton John’s “Rock me When He’s Gone” is a blues-tinged rocker with John’s typical pop overtones. Baldry does a good job with the vocals, backed by his female vocal choir, John’s lively piano and Caleb Quaye’s chiming organ. The original ten-track release of It Ain’t Easy closed out with the Rod Stewart/Ron Wood/Ronnie Lane tune “Flying,” a mid-tempo, folkish affair with slight vocals, minor guitarplay from Quaye, and John’s background piano. It was a rather weak way to end an otherwise strong album, but this reissue CD tacks on seven red-hot bonus tracks to pacify the punters. An acoustic version of the Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee gem “Blues (Cornbread, Meat And Molasses)” is Piedmont blues by way of London, with lively guitar and harmonica, with Baldry’s perfect drawl bringing the lyrics to life. Delta great Robert Johnson’s “Love In Vein” is delivered as a guitar-heavy dirge with a juke-joint heart, while Leroy Carr’s “Midnight Hour Blues” is a joyous celebration of the Delta spirit with lonesome harp and sparse but effective guitar picking laid beneath Baldry’s wailing vocals.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

While Baldry would go on to record several albums that were bluesier than It Ain’t Easy – including Remembering Leadbelly, his 2001 tribute to the legendary Huddie Ledbetter – a large part of this British blues-rock institution’s legacy is built upon this early album. Representing somewhat of a U.S. commercial breakthrough to go along with his longstanding popularity in the U.K., this is the album that introduced us to Long John Baldry and made many of us look at British blues in a different light. Best of all, It Ain’t Easy still rocks hard and sounds great even after 40+ years, and if you ain’t heard it, maybe it’s high time you did! (Stony Plain Records, reissued April 24, 2012)

Also on That Devil Music: Long John Baldry's Everything Stops For Tea review

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Classic Rock Review: Mick Abrahams’ A Musical Evening with Mick Abrahams (1971)

Mick Abrahams was Jethro Tull’s original axeman, splitting after Tull’s 1968 debut LP This Was over arguments with bandleader Ian Anderson concerning the band’s musical direction. Abrahams would go on to form Blodwyn Pig, a British blues-rock band with a heavy jazz undercurrent not unlike what John Mayall was pursuing at the time, releasing two albums with that band before hitting the solo circuit.

A Musical Evening with Mick Abrahams (often shortened to just Mick Abrahams) was the guitarist’s solo debut, a mixed effort that showcases his six-string skills while also revealing the gaps in his songwriting abilities. The album-opening “Greyhound Bus” offers an infectiously-funky rhythm with scraps of Abrahams’ guitar shining through the dense mix alongside Bob Sargeant’s keyboard riffs, while “Awake” presages prog-rock with its dark ambience, subdued vocals, and instrumental prowess. The fleet-of-foot “Big Queen” is similarly priggish, but with blues threads woven throughout similar to what Mountain, Bloodrock, and even Beck, Bogart & Appice would be doing a year or two hence.  

However, the album goes off the tracks with the curious, weak-kneed “Winds of Change,” which is too soft-edged for blues-rock, its psychedelic pretensions a few years past the “sell by” date. Abrahams’ “Seasons” partially redeems the album’s excesses; a more straight-forward rocker with blues and prog tendencies, there is plenty of ominous keyboards, razor-sharp fretwork, and exotic instrumentation beneath the gang vocals to fill the song’s lengthy 15-minute run time. While not the most auspicious of debut albums, A Musical Evening with Mick Abrahams offers a glimpse of the guitarist’s immense talents. Abrahams would take keyboard wizard Bob Sargeant and big-beat drummer Richie Dharma with him to the Mick Abrahams Band for a single LP the following year. (Chrysalis Records, 1971)

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Archive Review: Mick Abrahams' Hoochie Coochie Man (2013)

Our friends at Secret Records in the UK have dug up this recently-discovered and previously-unreleased collection of songs by British blues-rock guitar legend and former Blodwyn Pig frontman Mick Abrahams. Hoochie Coochie Man offers up 15 tracks that were originally recorded circa 2003/2004 and were seemingly lost until now, the album joining the label’s growing catalog of rare and obscure Abrahams discs. 

Featuring ten Abrahams’ originals written or co-written by the guitarist, along with a handful of well-chosen blues covers, Hoochie Coochie Man represents Abrahams in fine form. From jump street, I have a major bone to pick with the album’s lack of musician credits...Abrahams is clearly singing with other artists on several tracks, there’s some fine harp work peppering a few songs, and there is some solid musicianship, but you couldn’t tell it from the sparse info provided. Next time around, let’s not keep this stuff secret, OK?

That said, Hoochie Coochie Man is an entertaining collection, rife with the kind of blistering fretwork that you monster fans of blues-rock guitar eat up, the party starting with the lively title track. Abrahams nails the Willie Dixon blues standard (by way of Muddy Waters) with a rollicking arrangement, scorching guitar, and somebody’s flailing harp raging away in the background. The instrumental “Sunday Drivin’” is the kind of six-string romp that Jeff Beck used to crank out circa 1968 or so, while Abrahams’ original “Roadroller” is a swinging jump blues-styled rocker with plenty of jazzy guitar pickin’.

A cover of the Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee gem “Cornbread and Peas” is delivered with hearty vocal harmonies, jolts of scrappy harp, and subdued but elegant guitar and the slinky “I Ain’t Never” displays a different facet of Abrahams’ talents, greasy guitar licks and a languid tempo approximating the Piedmont blues style quite nicely. Overall, Hoochie Coochie Man is a lot of fun, Abrahams not re-inventing the blues but offering enough of his own flavor to spice up the musical gumbo; docked half a grade for the lack of musician info. Grade: B (Secret Records, released November 5, 2013)

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