He may have appropriated the Sonny Boy name from an earlier US bluesman, but Rice Miller established himself as the real deal in this country by spending the last years of his life (he died in 1965) haunting Britain’s burgeoning R&B scene. Svengali Georgio Gomelsky had him play live with both The Animals and The Yardbirds, taping the performances in late 1963/early ’64 to produce the oft-reissued barroom blues that appears on the first disc of this set.
The second reprises a less frequently heard 1965 studio session with Brian Auger, Jimmy Page and others which turned out to be Sonny Boy’s last recordings. Cut in three hours without rehearsal, these eight brassaugmented tracks have an experimental edge and a freshness lacking in the live recordings, which were very much overawed young musicians attempting to follow their (rather drunk) idol’s performance to varying effect.
Nicely packaged with period photos as this is, it’s hard to believe blues aficionados won’t own at least the contents of Disc One already.
