Essential Blues Recording
Bukka White - Muscular Acoustic Blues That Astounds
Bukka White – The Complete Bukka White – Columbia/Legacy CK 52782
Perhaps it’s somehow always relevant to note that White was related to B.B. King by being his uncle, but in reality, their blues approaches could not have been any more diverse. White’s blues tact was highly percussive, played acoustically in a multi-fingered form on a National steel guitar, segueing vigorously into the deployment of a series of searing slide guitar attacks that heighten the immediacy of the music and its message. His voice, rough and bearing stories of life’s conditions in a manner that commands the listener to pay close attention due to his somewhat frenzied, somewhat incomprehensible delivery, is indisputably dynamic. In total, White’s somewhat archaic blues presentation stands in stark comparison to King’s fluid, single-string artisanship, replete with the smoother, electrified urban manner more beholden to the suit-and-tie crowd than the downhome devotees of White’s rougher hewn brand of blues.
What is offered here is certain of White’s output over the four-year period of 1937-1940. These blues provide an intriguing poetic and autobiographical glimpse into White’s blues sensibilities, and at least in this reviewer’s eyes, rise easily into the realm of substantial blues art. Lyrically, the blues tunes here are deep and significant, amplified inestimably, again, by White’s strength of conveyance. With absolute authority, there exists astounding vocal and instrumental interchanges across this compilation.
Without a doubt, White’s contributions to the blues pedigree are distinctive and compelling, rendering this assemblage essential to any serious blues collection.
Below are the running tracks of this excellent CD, and below them is a YouTube link to Bukka White in-performance, one I am sure will greatly astound you.
Song Titles
- Pinebluff, Arkansas
- Shake ‘Em On Down
- Black Train Blues
- Strange Place Blues
- When Can I Change My Clothes?
- Sleepy Man Blues
- Parchman Farm Blues
- Good Gin Blues
- High Fever Blues
- District Attorney Blues
- Fixin’ To Die Blues
- Aberdeen Mississippi Blues
- Bukka’s Jitterbug Swing
- Special Streamline