The deep dark roots of the best of rock music are found on these two reissues by UK’s Acrobat Music label. They serve as a basis for both information and inspiration of how music did, and should sound.
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton is best known for penning the tune that made Elvis Presley a household name, with “Hound Dog”. Her own 1953 version with Kansas City Bill and His Orchestra has her growling and howling at the moon. The early part of her career has her in a hopping Bill Harvey’s Band with some earthy blues horns and hip piano work on the sweaty “No Joy For Me” and the shuffle-ing “Let Your Tears Fall Baby”. With some T-Bone Walker inspired guitar work behind her, she sneers through “I Smell A Rat” and with Ellingtonian horns added on, she unleashes on”I’ve Searched The Whole World Over.” Some hip vibes create a jazzy atmosphere in later sessions, as on “Rock A By Baby”, and while other black artists were polishing up to sound more “white”, she enters the 1960s on a rural back porch with some steamy harmonica on the red clay of “You Did Me Wrong” and “Big Mama’s Blues”. Thornton catches the rabbit.
Memphis-born Little Junior Walker was best known as a honey-toned singer, but he also played a pretty venomous harp, with this 2 disc, 50 song collection featuring some of his most blistering blues. His voice ranges from a sweet Clyde McPhatter to a jivey Louis Jordan, chugging along with the saxes on “Mystery Train” and swinging with the reeds on his hit “Next Time You See Me”. He is hip as he boogies on his other popular R&B chartbuster “Next Time You See Me” while he digs deep into a Chicago blues on “That’s All Right”. During the early sixties the band sounds a bit like James Brown’s Flames as he heats up on “Annie Get Your Yo-Yo” and “Driving Wheel”. Reissues like this reminds us of the surfeit of soulful sounds back in the “sterile” Eisenhower Years of the 1950s.