T-Bone Walker 1968 Funky Town

Genre: Blues
Rate: 320 kbps VBR / 44100
Time: 00:31:30
Size: 72,01 MB



The granddaddy of electric blues, and by default, rock & roll - he was Chuck Berry's biggest inspiration - pumped out this underrated gem of an album in 1968.

Don't expect a 'Electric Mud'-type thang here, with T-Bone restyling and psychedelizing his best known hits. Rather, it's a pretty solid old-school Chicago Blues platter with a few incredibly stompin' bits of funk.

"Goin' to Funky Town" actually is a traditional-styled blues instrumental, riding a throbbing, slow, lowdown groove for T-Bone to trickle his delicious guitar licks over. Also features a juke joint piano way up front.

With "Party Girl", Walker treads the realm of funk. Chanking his guitar in the finest James Brown tradition, this up-tempo soul/blues hybrid swings like crazy. T-Bone's super raw vocal is further augmented with thick, lazy horns.

Even funkier is the album's highlight: "Why My Baby (Keep On Bothering Me)" straddles a gritty, struttin' funk groove with plodding drums, booming bass and plenty of brass. Walker throws in some vicious electrifide riffs while belting out a powerful, smokin' vocal.

"Jealous Woman" is pure uptempo shufflin' blues, ridiculously catchy, featuring one of T-Bone's trademark scratching guitar licks, whereas "Going to Build Me a Playhouse" slows the pace down considerably. A superb, neatly arranged slow blues jam starting with a blistering solo, it has the right amount of punchy horns on the downbeat that give it that 'big band' sound.

Walker churns out a fast-paced blues rocker next with "Long Skirt Baby Blues", once more funkily chanking the rhtyhm parts and piercing out another grade A solo.

"Struggling Blues" conjurs up the sound of Little Walter, with its wailing harmonica opening, while "I'm In an Awful Mood" is straight-out T-Bone at his lyrical and musical finest. A "Stormy Monday"-patterned way-down-in-the-bottom blues, this serves as yet another perfect vehicle for the man's big, gruffy voice and passionate guitar improvs.

Walker ends his trip to funky town with "I Wish My Baby (Would Come Home at Night)", a brass-driven uptempo romp, concluding a fantastic journey that passed through the stations of funk and rock, with the locomotive's engine itself firmly running on pure, straight-up, hardcore Electric Blues.

Superb jam. (soulmakossa)



Tracklist:

01 - Goin' To Funky Town 04:59

02 - Party Girl 03:04

03 - Why My Baby (Keep On Bothering Me) 02:53

04 - Jealous Woman 03:14

05 - Going To Build Me A Playhouse 03:42

06 - Long Skirt Baby Blues 02:31

07 - Struggling Blues 03:49

08 - I'm In An Awful Mood 04:18

09 - I Wish My Baby (Would Come Home At Night) 03:00





T-Bone Walker here:

DL