Archive Review: George Thorogood’s 2120 South Michigan Avenue (2011)

In 2009, George Thorogood and his long-time band the Destroyers put together The Dirty Dozen, an odd album that comprised of a handful of new recordings and never before heard material from the band’s archive. Among the new tracks that Thorogood recorded for the album was a cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Tail Dragger.” The song must have captured the imagination of somebody in the executive suites at Capitol Records, because they asked Thorogood for an entire album of Chess Records covers.

The project turned out to be one that was very close to the blues-rock guitarist’s heart. As a teen, Thorogood heard the Rolling Stones instrumental “2120 South Michigan Avenue,” named for the address of Chess Records in Chicago, and wrote the label asking for a catalog. The music that Thorogood would discover on Chess directly influenced his choice to get into music, and had shaded and shaped his career ever since. Naming his Chess Records tribute album 2120 South Michigan Avenue, Thorogood and band rip and roar through songs originally recorded by such renown artists as Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and others.   

George Thorogood’s 2120 South Michigan Avenue

Thorogood’s “Going Back,” written with producer/musician Tom Hambridge, opens 2120 South Michigan Avenue with a bang. With a raunchy boogie-blues vibe and Texas-styled, Z.Z. Top guitar riffing, Thorogood sings “from 1956 to 1965, Mississippi Delta found a home on Chicago’s deep South Side.” From this point the lyrics pay homage to, and name check such Chess Records greats as Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and others, including Jake and Elwood blues, as Thorogood’s rhythm guitar paints wide swaths of color upon which guitarist Jim Suhler adds his precision leads.  

Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy, an invaluable Chess Records sideman who recorded a handful of sides for the label, lends his scorching six-string to the manic shuffle “Hi-Heel Sneakers,” a song Guy recorded for Chess in the 1950s. As the band builds a strong rhythmic backdrop, Guy yanks, spanks, and shreds his strings in a manner that Leonard Chess would most definitely not have approved as Thorogood delivers a fine, inspired vocal performance.  

Let It Rock

Any discussion of Chess Records can’t ignore the contributions to the label by songwriter, producer, and session bassist Willie Dixon. A keen wordsmith, Dixon wrote hits for a multitude of Chess label artists (and more than a few for artists on the rival Cobra Records label). Thorogood and his crew tackle a number of Dixon number, beginning with the jaunty “Seventh Son.” The Destroyers crank it up here, with a rowdy, reckless rhythm driving Thorogood’s livewire vocals and Suhler’s soaring fretwork. Slowing it down to a malevolent, dull ache for Dixon’s “Spoonful,” the band falls into a deep groove, the rhythm embellished by Suhler’s dark-hued solos. Thorogood’s vocals are deeper and properly menacing, although they fall short of the Wolf’s larger-than-life growl.

Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock” is a bona fide rock ‘n’ roll standard, the song banged out by garage bands and arena rockers alike for better than five decades now. This is the kind of blues-influenced, meat-and-potatoes rock that Thorogood and the Destroyers cut their eye teeth on, so they hit a mean lick here with a teetering, chaotic performance that jumps from your speakers and grabs you by the ears. By contrast, Bo Diddley’s self-titled ode sounds downright exotic, with the infamous Diddley backbeat capturing the listener’s attention with its mesmerizing vibe. Again, Thorogood and the boys can do this kind of stuff in their sleep, and they create a truly joyous noise here, with shimmering guitars and dancing rhythms.

Willie Dixon’s Gone

The underrated J.B. Lenoir’s “Mama Talk To Your Daughter” is delivered as an up-tempo rocker with a shuffling rhythm and rapidfire vocals, Thorogood’s guitar rattling and buzzing like a downed power line as Suhler embroiders fiery solos throughout the ramshackle performance. Blues harp giant Charlie Musselwhite, who learned his craft at the feet of the Chess masters, brings his experience to bear on the Dixon-penned Little Walter hit “My Babe.” As Thorogood and the guys lay down a solid rhythmic backdrop, Musselwhite adds a few instrumental flourishes, jumping in for elegant solos that display his fluid mastery of the harmonica.   
 
Another Thorogood/Hambrigde original, “Willie Dixon’s Gone,” is an unabashed rocker with an autobiographical bent. Above a locomotive rhythm courtesy the Destroyers, assisted by Thorogood’s greasy slide-guitar, the singer remembers the good old days passed, deciding that the “the good times ain’t as good as they used to be, whiskey ain’t as strong, and the blues ain’t as blue since Willie Dixon’s gone.” If radio programmer had any ears, they’d put this one on the airwaves and make it a giant hit. Musselwhite sits in again for the sultry, Chicago-blues-by-way-of-London instrumental title track, layering his dancing harp notes above the guitars and Kevin McKendree’s rich B-3 organ riffs.  

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Thorogood’s 2120 South Michigan Avenue is the artist’s first full studio album since 2006’s acclaimed The Hard Stuff, and his best album since 1982’s Bad To The Bone first made him a star during the blues-rock boom of the 1980s. The two original songs here fit right in with the spirit and the energy of the Chess material, and Thorogood and the Destroyers tackle the cover songs with raw, gritty enthusiasm, resulting in inspired and loving performances that pay proper tribute to the artists that influenced the band members to get into music in the first place. Highly recommended for both Thorogood’s existing fans and newcomers that may want to know what the guitarist is all about. (Capitol/EMI Records, released July 12th, 2011)

Buy the album from Amazon: George Thorogood’s 2120 South Michigan Avenue

Archive Review: Sandy Bull & the Rhythm Ace’s Live 1976 (2012)

One of a legion of young soul rebels who emerged during the early 1960s with guitar in hand, Sandy Bull was in the same league as fellow travelers like John Fahey, Leo Kottke, and Britain’s Bert Jansch. Unlike those aforementioned contemporaries, however, who pulled the majority of their inspiration from blues and folk music, often with a smattering of jazz, Bull’s restless musical spirit would lead him to incorporate elements of classical, Indian, and droning Arabic raga style into his playing.

Also unlike his fellow string-benders, Bull largely eschewed the traditional three-to-four-minute pop song format in favor of extended instrumental jams that would allow him to stretch out like an improvisational jazzman and get to the heart of the performance, providing his breathtakingly intricate compositions with greater texture and tone. Bull would also pick up a bass guitar, banjo, and oud once in a while, his proficiency in these various instruments lending a dangerously-exotic vibe to his compositions.

Signing with the noted folk label Vanguard Records, Bull released a handful of albums circa 1963-72, the most acclaimed of these, his 1963 debut Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo, recorded with jazz percussionist Billy Higgins (who had played with Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Herbie Hancock, among others). Featuring the twenty-minute, side-long “Blend,” the album featured Bull’s myriad of influences and introduced him as a serious, talented musician. But by the time of the release of 1972’s Demolition Derby, Bull had sunk deeply into drug addiction, and he seemingly disappeared from music altogether until resurfacing in 1988 with the acclaimed Jukebox School of Music album.  

Sandy Bull & the Rhythm Ace’s Live 1976

The truth is, Sandy Bull hadn’t turned his back on music during the 1970s, and after going through rehab, he relocated to San Francisco and began performing again, including the May 1976 appearance opening for Leo Kottke at the Berkeley Community Center that is captured by Live 1976. Remastered from a long-lost tape made by friend and engineer Hillel Resner, Drag City’s vinyl-only release of Live 1976 shines a light on Bull’s enormous talents with a set of performances and soft-spoken intros that paint a fuller portrait of this unfairly obscure instrumentalist.

Accompanied by “The Rhythm Ace,” his electronic drum machine, and a four-track TASCAM recorder on which he would often place backing bass and drums to accompany his live lead instrument, Bull displayed the technological acumen of a prog-rock virtuoso while unfolding his largely acoustic-based, dream-like compositions. Live 1976 opens with “Oud,” a seven-minute-plus instrumental performed with the pear-shaped Middle Eastern stringed instrument that Bull had come to favor. The performance is simply magical, mesmerizing in its depth and tone as Bull explores several varying musical landscapes within the confines of the song.

A brief interlude follows where he jokingly introduces “the band” and demonstrates the abilities of “The Rhythm Ace,” a still-unfamiliar bit of technology in the mid-1970s. With “Love Is Forever,” Bull tries his hand at a more-traditional, albeit elongated pop song, his imperfect but aching vocals accompanied by elegant acoustic fretwork, the drum machine, and syncopated riffing on an electric oud. Inspired by the Drifters, Bull introduces “Driftin’“ as a “beach tune,” a pre-recorded bass line providing support beneath Bull’s spry, soulful guitarplay that weds an odd folk-rock sound to a lofty R&B framework, with a little weepy country steel twang laid in on top as an exciting counterpoint.

Alligator Wrestler

Bull’s humorous introduction to “Alligator Wrestler” explains the childhood interlude with the song’s protagonist and veers off course into a story from his rehab before tying it all together with a nice bit of metaphor. The song itself is an energetic, upbeat instrumental that evinces a swamp-rock vibe, adding a loping, funky rhythmic track with heavy bass and some of the oddest, Southern-styled chicken-pickin’ that you’ll ever hear. Running nearly nine-minutes, the performance is exhausting and awe-inspiring, and is the beating creative heart of Live 1976.

The album ends with “New York City,” the performance falling just shy of eight minutes and displaying a more urbane, sophisticated edge to Bull’s playing than previous tracks. The guitarist’s nimble licks are paired with a jazzy, syncopated rhythm resulting in an inspired piece that easily places Bull alongside such vaunted contemporaries as Larry Coryell and Al Di Meola as a skilled jazz-fusion stylist.

While continuing to perform, often outside of the public’s eye, throughout the 1980s, Bull would eventually land in the rural countryside near Nashville, building a home and studio and raising a family. He would return to the recording world with the aforementioned Jukebox School of Music, followed by 1991’s Vehicle, and 1996’s Steel Tears, both albums released on his own independent Timeless Recording Society label, all three treated with deference by critics.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Although passing away in 2001 at the too-young age of 60 from cancer, Sandy Bull left behind a body of work that, while not large by contemporary recording standards, nevertheless represents the best qualities of his playing – creative, efficient, meticulous, imaginative, and adventuresome. Live 1976 is a welcome addition to this catalog that serves to bolster Bull’s growing reputation, the album a warm and entertaining collection that reveals another dimension of this underrated instrumentalist’s enormous talents. (Drag City Records, released February 8, 2012)

Review originally published by Blurt magazine