This is a welltimed release, as the Orwellian snout ban looms and the timehonoured smoky club and fag-ascool- accessory become as bygone as the music captured on this latest addition to the excellent Buzzola canon. After Reverend JM Gates’ damning 1937 sermon, Smoking Woman On The Street, singing cowboy Tex Williams leads the charge with his 1947 anthem Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette. The music in the customary deluxe pack spans a gamut of old time styles, including hillbilly, Western swing, 20s Dixieland, Fats Waller barstool laments, smooth Mills Brothers crooning and wonderful curios such as Billy Briggs’ spit-bucket boogie, Chew Tobacco Rag.
There are a variety of takes on this common theme, ranging from a pre-Fever Peggy Lee leaving her lover with the note Don’t Smoke In Bed, to the king of blues double entendres, Bo Carter, drawing on the subject for his nudge-inducing Cigarette Blues. Neil Kallas’ everinformative Buzzola sleevenotes this time round point out that Bob Dylan played Curtis Gordon’s Caffeine & Nicotine on one of his radio shows last year and provides engaging in-depth background notes on all the artists, as well as the history of the subject matter itself! Probably the unhealthiest album of the year, but irresistibly enjoyable.
