HOLLYWOOD FATS BAND DELIVER SUITCASE BLUES ST. LOUIS STYLE

Going to concentrate on some rare and obscure blues for a while, well that's my intention anyway, got a huge blues collection which is collecting too much dust these days, gonna have to make more time to listen to some more music instead of writing about it (laugh).


I am such a massive fan of honky tonk piano blues, the real smokey stuff out of St. Louis during the 30's and 40`s, and this 1979 interpretation of SUITCASE BLUES by HOLLYWOOD FATS BAND, a much covered blues standard dating back to the 1920's, is in my opinion anyway the closest you will ever get to replicating Memphis Minnie, the black woman who took it up to the men in the clubs of St. Louis and Chicago before and after WW2 and carved out a less than polished but highly influential body of barrelhouse piano blues which swung a mean hook.


SUITCASE BLUES comes off the same HOLLYWOOD FATS album i previewed recently, ROCK THIS HOUSE, amongst all the guitar driven and more electric Chicago material this song stands out on its own for being diffrent, if you want to find out more about Hollywood Fats Band and who plays what in the band read my original article, it's only a few weeks old. There are a few covers of this song that are okay but the HOLLYWOOD FATS BAND version is superior by quite a long way.