Little Victor – Boogie All Night­ – El Toro Records ETCD 6048

I want you to envision the grittiest, nastiest, roughest, and most individualistic take on downhome boogie blues and directly assign your thoughts to an artist named Little Victor.  His brand of blues drips with authentic swagger and meaningful authority that assuredly tightly grasps listeners from the first distorted guitar notes and holds them captive until the last tone fades, leaving them stripped bare of what they previously believed confident boogie blues was all about.

There is a swampy, backwoods darkness to all of Little Victor’s blues attributes, whether they be found in his wildly contorted guitar directions, his juicy and greasy harmonica brayings, or his barely-recognizable vocal spewings.  Little Victor’s blues framework is akin to John Lee Hooker having a baby that was raised by R.L. Burnside who made him listen day and night to Junior Kimbrough while reading a tome on Louisiana Swamp Blues in between studying abstract art in a class taught by Frank Frost.  No one, and I mean not one single blues artist today, presents the blues so individualistically and with so very much aplomb and listener fulfillment as Little Victor.

Being born Victor Macoggi in Rome, Italy to an American serviceman-led family, the sense of wanderlust and a desire to seek new experiences has edged the Little Victor who produces this nasty meld of back-country blues and boogie.  A man who has called a great deal of the European continent home, along with a wide swath of the U.S., and someone who is fluent in at least five languages, speaks and creates blues to match the esoteric nature of his wandering blues minstrel lifestyle.  Without a doubt, the most musically formative years for Little Victor were spent in Memphis where he busked for weeks on end plying his blues capabilities.  Eventually making his way southward into Mississippi, he seems to have allowed the humid, raw Delta blues to seep into his soul, finally arriving at the grand amalgamation that is his blues charter.

There is a cantankerousness to Little Victor’s blues visions, with his vast use of distortion only heightening the self-assured boogie nature of his blues inventory.  One can feel the dark of night closing in as the swamp moss on the trees hides the moon when Little Victor comes calling with his blues revelations.  He preaches to that deep swamp blackness.

If you want to be wholly cleansed of sanitary repetitive blues as is sometimes found in others’ blues outings these days, put this in your CD player and tap your foot, swing and sway, and nod your head in agreement that Little Victor is a certifiable blues prophet, one we should all luxuriate in.

Tough stuff!  Pick this one up!  Highly recommended!