Not totally positive if i have previewed this album already,
i may have or very likely i've mentioned it anyway at some
time when i've been talking about blues music. Then again
i might been getting Jimmy Witherspoon confused with a
fella named Jimmy Rushing. Anyway, it doesn't really mat-
ter does it? I like both these guys so much, i should listen
to their blues shouter style of jump blues, with a massive
dose of straight out be-bop jazz, a lot more often. Jimmy
Witherspoon made a lot of albums in his career, i probaly
have listened to around 5 out of them, so i cant make any
grand statement to say what is definitely his best album.
Even though Witherspoon and Rushing were both black men
and were trying to carve out their career at a time in the
United States when racism was still common right across
the country, they still managed to earn a lot of respect
from white crooners and record executives, enough to
get them past the goalpost of obscurity. Certainly the
racial barriers which other famous black artists such
as Miles Davis & Charlie Parker had already broken
down in the tolerant pure jazz utopia of New York
helped no end to allow a number of african amer-
icans to be able to have a long and very fulfilling
career. It wasn't always so for many bluesmen
who escaped Louisiana and Missisippi to es-
cape the KKK and a music scene that didn't
allow for anything bar cajun music and the
delta form of the blues. Most of them end-
ed up in Chicago but only guys like Muddy
Waters and a few others hit the big time.
Jimmy Witherspoon and Jimmy Rushing were considered
to be practitioners of a blues style commonly referred
to as Kansas City blues. It's one of my favourite sty-
les because it's a mixture of blues singing and jazz
how it was supposed to be, long before acid & San
Francisco sunshine and beatniks got into the mind
of Miles Davis sometime during the mid 60`s with
no offence meant whatsoever to his awesome late
50`s be-bop jazz. Witherspoon as i did say earlier
recorded enough albums to sink a battleship, the
pick of the albums which i have listened to is his
fourth one, all the way back to 1959, an absolute
atmospheric gem with some warm and fuzzy pro-
duction you would expect could easily have been
derived out of Norman Petty's Clovis studio (he
being Buddy Holly's man). The album is called
SINGIN' THE BLUES, just make very certain if
you import the album or buy it on E-Bay that
you're not ordering in an album called SINGS
THE BLUES, i think, but i'm not totally sure,
that Witherspoon did record another album
by that almost identical name. If memory
serves me correctly it is one i've listened
to and it's totally inferior to SINGIN'. If
you like the blues, jazz & some boogie
woogie, you would have to love Kansas
City blues, and SINGIN' THE BLUES, re-
leased on Blue Note Records, is a gem.
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