Search - Charlie Musselwhite :: Tennessee Woman

Wonderful

Lachlan Murray | Ottawa, ON, Canada | 10/15/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If I had to choose a favorite Charlie Musselwhite album, Tennessee Woman might be it. I've been listening to it for almost 20 years and expect to continue listening to it for at least another 20. But really, Musselwhite's other two Vanguard albums from the 1960s, Stand Back! and Stone Blues, and his two early 70s Arhoolie albums, Takin' My Time and Goin' Back Down South, claim about equal affection.The thing I love about Tennessee Woman is its moodiness. Classic Chicago blues featuring Musselwhite's wonderfully expressive, mournful harp playing and soulful, world-weary vocals, laced with great jazzy piano from Skip Rose. The other sidemen are equally inspired, forming a perfect cohesive unit as harp, vocals, and piano, and Larry Welker's liquid steel guitar, weave around and through one another. A little over halfway through an ethereal, 12-minute version of "Christo Redemptor," after a lengthy piano solo, Musselwhite's harp comes back in like a giant slowly awakening. Magic."I'm still a stranger in a strange land / baby, until the day I die," Musselwhite sings in "Blue Feeling Today," the sentiment reiterated in the album's dreamy final track, "I'm a Stranger." Musselwhite manifests his, and America's, perennial theme of loneliness and alienation with an authority available to only a few musicians. Tennessee Woman is a lasting brilliant gem."

Have owned this CD for almost thirty-five years.

greg taylor | Portland, Oregon United States | 03/08/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I saw Charlie Musselwhite for the first time in 1969. I bought this album soon after and have never stopped listening to it. This is a phenomenal blues band at the top of their game. Besides Musselwhite playing beautiful harp and singing beautifully, the band features Skip Rose on piano, Tim Kaihatsu and Larry Welker sharing the guitar duties, Carl Severied on the bass, Lance Dickerson on the drums, Fred Roulette on the pedal steel guitar and Rod Piazza sits in with a chromatic harmonica on "Blue Feeling Today"
One of the things that is great about the blues bands back in the sixties and seventies is that there seemed to be more emphasis on everybody in the group playing instead on just one or two featured players. "A Nice Day For Something" and "Christo Redemptor" feature solos by at least four people each. Musselwhite also gave room on each of the albums in this period for Rose to feature one of his own songs. The rest of the material includes songs by the likes of Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Duke Pearson, Fenton Robinson as well as a couple of songs by Musselwhite.
This was a time period that was a golden age for the blues. Magic Sam, Muddy Waters, Butterfield, Buddy Guy, Otis Spann, Junior Wells and many others were in their prime. It was still possible to hear some of the great country blues players like Son House or Mississippi John Hurt or Fred McDowell. Many of the players from the generation inbetween like Sam Hopkins were still around. It was possible to hear the whole history of the genre being performed live and to hear the extensions of the genre that people like Butterfield were making. Musselwhite is as good as anybody from that period. And this album is one of his best."