Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions

Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions

ASIN: B00008OTU7

Track Listings

1. Spoonful

2. I Want To Be Loved

3. Little Red Rooster

4. Dimples

5. I Just Want To Make Love To You

6. Evil

7. Death Letter

8. Fattening Frogs For Snakes

9. Money

10. I Love The Life I Live

11. Too Lazy To Work, Too Lazy to Steal

12. Double Trouble

13. I Asked For Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)

14. Back Door Man

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Hyena Records is happy to announce the return to print of this critically acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated album by celebrated guitarist James Blood Ulmer. Recorded at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, TN, and produced by Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid, the date finds Ulmer returning to his roots to explore the blues. Digipak. 2003.

Tracks:

Spoonful
I Want To Be Loved
Little Red Rooster
Dimples
I Just Want To Make Love To You
Evil
Death Letter
Fattening Frogs For Snakes
Money
I Love The Life I Live
Too Lazy To Work, Too Lazy to Steal
Double Trouble
I Asked For Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)
Back Door Man

Album Description

Hyena Records is happy to announce the return to print of this critically acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated album by celebrated guitarist James Blood Ulmer. Recorded at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, TN, and produced by Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid, the date finds Ulmer returning to his roots to explore the blues. Digipak. 2003.

Customer Reviews:

Good Disc!.......2003-07-28

This is a good disc, with one caveat.

The singing is great, and the rhythm section is world class. These are some of the best songs ever written, and a terrific survey of blues songs/styles. "Dimples" and "Death Letter" are classic performances.

The one caveat is Vernon Reid's guitar playing. I could never tap into the music of "Living Color" -- it always seemed like someone had subtracted the rhythm. On this disc, Vernon tries to play blues guitar, and on a couple of songs he succeeds. On the others, his playing sounds like Ornette Coleman is sitting in while suffering from a middle ear disorder. This is a matter of taste, but it didn't suit me.

Tracks:

Spoonful
I Want To Be Loved
Little Red Rooster
Dimples
I Just Want To Make Love To You
Evil
Death Letter
Fattening Frogs For Snakes
Money
I Love The Life I Live
Too Lazy To Work, Too Nervous To Steal
Doublt Trouble
I Asked For Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)
Back Door Man

Amazon.com

Some of his previous work hinted that free-jazz guitarist James Blood Ulmer could do something interesting in the blues form, but Memphis Blood may surprise his admirers with its impressive display of respect and knowledge in a set of much-loved blues from the repertoires of Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker and, above all, Howlin' Wolf, the point of origin of five of the selections. There is nothing invariable about the Ulmerising process: the bursts of noise guitar in "I Just Want to Make Love to You" and "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)" are outnumbered by the less dramatic, more conventional Chicago blues arrangements of "Little Red Rooster," "Evil," and Otis Rush's "Double Trouble," and a long but compelling reading of Son House's "Death Letter." David Barnes's harmonica and producer Vernon Reid's guitar are stylistically right on the money, too, but the album's chief revelation is that Ulmer is a natural blues singer. --Tony Russell

Customer Reviews:

Good Party Record but Hardly Essential.......2002-08-11

Solid and well (over?)produced but ultimately unremarkable. Like Buddy Guy's recent "Sweet Tea", Ullmer is putting himself in a no-win situation. A fine and inventive guitarist, what can he bring to the Chess canon that Robert Lockwood or Hubert Sumlin or Willie Johnson or Pat Hare haven't already accomplished? The answer is not much besides a good-natured delivery, which works well on some songs but fails in others. For example, we don't really get the impression that evil is going on in "Evil", nor do we get the feeling that his woman is really lying on the cooling board in "Death Letter. And do we really need to hear another cover version of "Money?"

Like another reviewer remarked, these are all songs you can hear cranked out by a band of moonlighting dilletante fat white accountants at any faux-blues bar in America on a Friday night. Ullmer plays reverential and straightforward and doesn't really take it to the next level the way you might expect of someone who has played with Rashied Ali and Ornette Coleman.

Raw and Soulful.......2001-12-04

I've never listened to much blues music, but I heard this one playing at a record store and had to have it. The sound is raw as if these musicians got together in the studio and just started playing from the hip with the red light on. I don't think they did much in the way of mixing, editing, or second takes. It's not the cleanest, crispest album I've heard but man it is good listening! Without a blues background, I can't really critique this album nor can I compare it to anything I've heard. But I can say that this album has opened a whole new genre in my music library.

Chicago at Sunrise.......2001-11-21

Weird--a lot of this is Chicago blues from the pen of Willie Dixon. "Double Trouble" is the Otis Rush classic; "Fattening Frogs for Snakes" is the Sonny Boy Williamson song. Doesn't have a lot to do with Memphis musically or spiritually, in my opinion, but it's good stuff nonetheless. I mean, they don't play it like Memphis guys would and the repertoire itself doesn't much suggest Sun Records or Memphis-style blues. It's Chicago blues as it should be played, full-out, and mostly excellent if occasionally a little boring for my taste. There's some nice guitar but it's not quite adventurous enough from a man who has explored harmolodics with the likes of Coleman and Blythe. On a lot of the classic Chess blues records, Robert Lockwood Jr. plays some really interesting jazzy stuff and you woulda thought Ulmer would have taken that and expanded upon it. There's a certain purity here and lack of detail and definition that I guess is intended as a kind of statement--they just chop away at these tunes. Blood sings pretty well but he isn't quite singer enough to pull off "Double Trouble" or "Evil"; however, this band generates enough momentum to get around that. For the most part this is predictable material that any bunch of fat white guys at Huey's in midtown Memphis would do on a Sunday afternoon. Ulmer does it much better and I guess the point is the predictability of it all. "Death Letter" is a masterpiece and "Too Lazy to Work, Too Nervous to Steal" is charming--sounds kinda like that old Buster Brown version of "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby." Memphis isn't known for blues any more, although there are some exceptions like Alvin Youngblood Hart, and the Fat Possum school of music (from down in the "hill country" southeast of Memphis and east of the Delta) doesn't really have a lot to do with "blues" as it's usually known; the Fat Possum guys are more like atonal one-chord frat-boy whomp, cool if you like that sorta thing, boring if you don't. Nonetheless, sending Ulmer to Sun Studios is an audacious concept that works. I wonder what they think of it down in Memphis. Nicely retrograde in an age when the most commercial music coming out of the Bluff City is rap. How quickly our musical revolutionaries--that rhymes with "millionairies"--age.

Blood Shows a Side That I Always Knew Was There.......2001-11-14

What a great CD. This man is a versatile genius! I get tired of people criticizing Blood's vocals - and here he turns in one of his best vocal performances. Blood's South Carolina blues roots come out in this wonderful CD. Vernon Reid and Charles Burnham sound great on here too! I always thought Blood had a lot of Howlin wolf and Muddy Waters in him.

All of these blues classics are interpereted in Blood's unique style. I particularly like the way he gives a nod to much of his avante garde work but still sticks to the blues. One of the best blues CD's of 2001.

Blood turned me onto Hammond B-3 trios when I interviewed him for Guitar Player about ten years ago - that would be a nice follow up to this (hint, hint). This guy is one of the most underated musicians in America today.

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