BUDDY GUY MOANIN' AND GROANIN' IN MEMORY OF JOHN LEE HOOKER

In the city of Chicago, veteran African-American blues guitarist/singer BUDDY GUY is nothing short of a legend, the obvious successor to other great bluesman from the windy city including none other than the late great MUDDY WATERS.

At 76 years of age, BUDDY GUY is naturally slowing down as far as new recordings are concerned, and i would imagine the same applies to live performances across america. Guy has recorded a pile of albums stretching way back to the 1950`s on various record labels, most bearing the typical spitfire, harmonica stoked blues you'd expect to come out of Chicago.

Therefore, i thought I would write something about a BUDDY GUY album which is a bit quirky and diffrent from the rest. In memory of JOHN LEE HOOKER, who passed away in 2001, Guy recorded a tribute album of sorts in 2003, that even included a few songs written by Hooker, titled BLUES SINGER.

Remembering that Chicago blues and Missisippi Blues are so diffrent dynamically, it was quite a radical diversion for Guy to take recording an album which took him way outside his own comfort zone. Essentially Guy was making a deliberate attempt to play a guitar and sing like John Lee Hooker.

BLUES SINGER is not bad but it still has a bit of a forced and manufactured mood resonating through most of the tracks, although I must say Guy and his band do a great job of CRAWLIN' KINGSNAKE, ANNA LEE and the swamp blues ripper MOANIN' AND GROANIN', a blues standard which has been covered by many acts over the years.

I've heard about five diffrent covers of MOANIN' AND GROANIN' from Missisippi and Louisiana based acts myself, but i have to say the 'outsider' from Chicago has the best version.

The biggest problem with the album is that Guy's higher pitch is simply not that suitable for singing Delta blues, even on MOANIN' AND GROANIN' he is singing in the wrong key, but the song's breezy hook laden swagger makes it one of the greatest blues songs recorded in the 21st century.