King's cuts with N'Awleens seasonings.
11/02/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Al Toussaint and his swampland badlanders take King on a funky blues ride in their neck of the woods. Not that King's Stax-Memphis blues wasn't phunkay enough. Everything about N'Awleens is styled just a little bit different than the rest of the nation, and this CD is no exception. Sublime, indeed, is King's redux of the standard, "The Very Thought of You"--so great that it compelled me to search for this CD. "We All Wanna Boogie", "Get Out My Life Woman", "Angel of Mercy", great tunes, all. Aw, heck. Get the CD, put it in your player, and let it ride. Then search out some of King's greatest on Stax--"I'll Play the Blues For You" and "Roadhouse Blues". Albert King was truly one of the most underrated artists of all time. Most of us who knows blues, though, love Albert."
Albert King in the Crescent City
Leo H. Stakemiller | Houston, Tx. | 03/23/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"New Orlean Heat, an Albert King collaboration with Allen Toussaint, is, in many ways, a step back in time, or an homage to the fifties and early sixties, when blues and r&b artists flocked to Cosmo's to cut records with the funk talent of the crescent city. Albert is his usual smooth, velvet bulldozer on vocals, and arrangements are good, if not cutting edge. A lot less of the NO style funk than one might expect. The guitar work is subdued, so if you are expecting a lot of heat in New Orleans Heat. prepare to be underwhelmed. Not a lot of "talking wire" here. Perhaps the song choices and arrangements tended to muzzle Albert's well-known guitar excitement, the be a team player approach. Surprisingly, the liner notes give no mention of the backup female vocalists, and perhaps a few other members of the team. The foregoing disparagements aside, this is a fine album and one any AK fan needs in his collection to represent his Tomato years, in much the same way a Freddie King fan needs Texas Cannonball to represent his Shelter years. Just don't expect Born Under a Bad Sign meets the Meters."
