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CD74
EDDY "THE CHIEF" CLEARWATER
RESERVATION BLUES
(BullsEye Blues & Jazz/Shock)
www.shock.com.au
Clearwater was born Edward Harrington in 1935 in Macon, MS. His family moved to Alabama where he started playing guitar. He would go on to play with the Five Blind Boys of Alabama before moving to Chicago in 1950 at the age of fifteen. Over the years he has released numerous 45s, toured the world, and his latest album Reservation Blues is his seventeenth since 1976.
His collaboration with Duke Robillard proves to be a good partnership as they both produced the album and Clearwater's lead guitar is complimented by Robillard's rhythm guitar and his occasional solos. The album combines hard hitting blues with a serious message in Winds Of Change that was written about a tornado that ripped through Nashville, and his own song Walls Of Hate which he wrote after the Berlin Wall came down. Both Clearwater and Robillard take turns soloing on the instrumental Blues Cruise, and Eddy's cousin Carey Bell is featured playing harmonica on Find Yourself. It also has great rockin' party songs like I Wouldn't Lay My Guitar Down and Dale Hawkins' Susie Q, and no Eddy Clearwater album would be complete without a cover of a Chuck Berry song, Sweet Little Rock And Roller finishes the album off.
It may have taken him 50 years since he moved to Chicago to do it, but I think he has finally hit the nail on the head with this recording. Reservation Blues is definitely the best album The Chief has recorded in his long career as a Chicago bluesman.
Eric Black
Blue Country 101FM
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