Album Reviews

Recorded live on June, 28th at the 1974 Montreux Jazz Festival, this hot session features Wells and Guy backed by a last minute “pick-up” band consisting of ex-Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman, Otis Spann’s Muddy Waters band replacement Pinetop Perkins, ex-Manassas drummer Dallas Taylor, best known for peeking (or peaking) out the door on the back cover of Crosby Stills, Nash (on which he also played) and his brother Terry Taylor on rhythm guitar.

Wells and Guy, apparently unhappy with the house band offering, came to Wyman, who was there backing Muddy Waters and asked him to put a group together for them. The Stones had invited the duo to tour with them earlier in the decade. The result is a stellar, spontaneous session with Wells and Guy backed by an all-star grouping that provides strong, transparent support while also laying back and letting the stars shine.

The tunes are well-worn Guy/Wells classics, but they don’t matter as much as the way they’re played, which is with lots of swagger, soul and sweat. Wells wails, augmenting his vocals blowing hot harmonica licks into the microphone, stabbing the Swiss evening with the loss and pain blues fans crave witnessing. There are some astonishing smoke and mirror moments where Wells and Guy hand off harmonica and guitar riffs between them with a sleight of hand fluidity that only comes from years of playing together.

The recording is immediate, up-front and has plenty of monitor reverb, giving it an extra dose of “live” on a nicely rendered soundstage.

Wyman got the rights to the tapes, finally mixing them with Paul Libson at Pye Studios, March of 1980. Blind Pig originally issued the set in America back in 1982 and reissues it here on high quality 180g vinyl mastered from the original tapes by Roger Seibel as the first of what blues fans hope will be many more analog blues issues from the label (there are two others in this initial offering).

Whether Seibel cut from the analog masters or transferred them to the digits first and mastered from that I can’t say, but the sound is plenty good, though side one is a bit bright and a “de-esser” would have been nice in a couple of places where if my set-up couldn’t negotiate the “S” turns cleanly, yours probably won’t either.

Other than those few small glitches and a somewhat bright side one, this is a great concert to attend whenever and however many times you wish—one that sounds as fresh and exciting now as on the day it was recorded.