Dear Friends,
Much activity here at Alligator as we swing into the fall. Our new low-price sampler album/cassette/compact disc, called “Genuine Houserockin’ Music II” is selling like mad. Lots of stores stocking it that virtually never carried a blues record before. (Record Bar sees the light!). Of course a lot of you already own some of the records from which these cuts were pulled (thanks!). But if you’ve always wondered about some of the Alligators you haven*t bought, here’s a perfect way to find out…. cheap.
Right now, I’m hard at work on mixes for a terrific new Roy Buchanan LP called “Hot Wires”. More of Roy’s wild guitar plus guest vocals by Johnny Sayles and Kanika Kress, second guitar by Donald Kinsey, and plenty of blues done up in the fireball Buchanan style. Should be out next month.
I’m also working on a new album from a series of sessions produced by A.C. Reed, tentatively entitled “I’m In The Wrong Business”. A.C. has never gotten his due as one of Chicago’s finest blues writers, not to mention sax men and singers.This album is all Reed originals, many of them tongue-in-cheek, like the title cut and “Fast Food Annie”, an ode to the pulchritude of a Burger King waitress! Other players include Maurice John Vaughn, Stevie Ray Vaughan (no relation) and Bonnie Raitt. Look for an October release.
Finally, I want to say “goodbye” to Jim O’Neal, leaving the LB editor’s job after seventeen years. LIVING BLUES started in my one-room apartment (where Alligator was born a year later), with a bunch of us who hung around the Jazz Record Mart. At that time, there was only the vaguest hope that the USA could support a blues magazine. Jim and Amy did a magnificent job against tough odds, and the blues community now is larger than we ever imagined. Good luck with the book, Jim. Thanks from all of us.
Last issue I was telling you about the live Son Seals album that we tried to record at the Wise Fools Pub, ending up with our getting snowed out. Well, we managed to cut again a couple months later (first time Son was available for a 4-night stand) but minus Alberto Gianquinto’s keyboards. Son just tore up the Fools that weekend. A.C. Reed sat in and he and Lacy Gibson made a sort of “section”, with Lacy playing horn lines on guitar. By the way, Lacy is another terrific bluesman who has never received much credit. Check out our “Living Chicago Blues” series, or his Black Magic (Dutch) lp. Anyway, I worked on Son’s mixes through much of the summer, commuting out to the suburbs to the engineer’s house. “Live And Burning” turned out to be a hell of an exciting album, and was received as one of the best live blues records of the *70’s.
Meanwhile, I was also working on my most ambitious project– the “Living Chicago Blues” albums (the first three volumes) and planning what turned out to be a very ill-fated tour of Europe for Son Seals, set for late fall of 1978. It was almost the last touring that Son (or I) ever did-~at least in this lifetime!
More later,
Bruce Iglauer