This is a timely, major label reissue of the star of the recently acclaimed biopic Cadillac Records, captured shortly before Waters’ passing and during the period when guitar maven Johnny Winter had taken the bluesman under his wing. Headlining in 1981 before his hometown fans at Chicago’s premier outdoor music festival, with a cooking band put together by harmonica player Mojo Buford, with guitarists John Primer and Rick Kreher, pianist Lovie Lee, bassist Ernest Johnson and drummer Ray Allison, Waters begins with a needles-in-the-red version of Mannish Boy and never lets up.
Winter shows up in the middle of an exuberant Walking Thru The Park and lingers, taking the vocal on both a cover of St Louis Jimmy’s Goin’ Down Slow and on the slow-grinding You’ve Got To Love Her With A Feeling, which segues into Eddie Boyd’s classic Five Long Years, where both veterans Mighty Joe Young and Big Twist take vocal turns as well.
Other standout tracks include Waters’ personalised slide guitar showcase They Call Me Muddy Waters and arresting revivals of Jimmy Reed’s You Don’t Have To Go and Slim Harpo’s signature I’m A King Bee. As pure a distillation of that postwar, electrified Chicago blues sound as you’ll ever find.
