Today’s music to keep me SSSsSAaaAAnnnnNeE – Jimmy Reed
Today’s Music to Cheer me up in Isolation – Jimmy Reed
I just love Jimmy Reed. He was a staple of the British Beat groups of the early sixties – like the Stones, Downliners Sect and Yardbirds. That infectious beat just made you want to bop about.
He got me going up, down and all around!
I only saw him once, with his son on bass, and he was brilliant.
So today I will be playing Jimmy Reed real loud!!
More R@B for Tobes – Jimmy Reed – Ain’t That lovin’ You Baby
This is the great Jimmy Reed who invented that chugging beat. He was a great performer. I only saw him once, and yes, he was remarkably drunk. But he was also remarkably cheerful and absolutely brilliant.
This is Ain’t that Lovin’ You Baby – one of his many best. Elvis covered this one.
This is Shame Shame Shame – another great one – The Merseybeats did a great cover of this one!
Slim Harpo – Opher’s World pays tribute to a genius.
Straight out of the Louisiana swamps on to my turntable via Jimmy Miller’s production at Excello. That was the feel of Slim Harpo. He produced that electric, mesmerising Jimmy Reed beat to create a bayou drenched blues with a laid back vocal. I discovered him on an album called authentic swamp blues. Along with stable mates Lonesome Sundown, Lazy Lester and Lightnin’ Slim they churned the muddy green waters of Louisiana blues to create a primordial soup of sound which was compulsive. The guitars rumbled and reverberated and vocals whined. It was electric music from the rural backwaters. It was redolent of those sweaty humid southern nights in crude wooden shacks beside the murky green swamps with the croaking frogs where the dudes strutted and preened like peacocks and the mamas grinded and bumped to that insistent beat.
Slim Harpo grooved and growled through numbers like ‘Got love if you want it’, ‘I’m a King Bee’ and ‘Shake your hips’. He was the best of the bunch and inspired the Stones, Kinks and Yardbirds. Unfortunately he never got to perform in England but I did get to see Lazy Lester and have a limited talk about those early days. He was a bit surly, taciturn and reticent but then he was a lover and not a fighter.
I did get to see Slim’s grave while in Baton Rouge. He had a tomb with a slab over the top with the name James Moore inscribed on it. The tomb was heavily overgrown with great gnarled roots growing out of it. Slim was going back to the swamps he’d come from.
Slim Harpo should be revered the world over.