Sunday Morning Blues - Magic Sam, Jimmy McCracklin, Percy Mayfield, Johnny Moore's Three Blazers

And thus we push onwards into the second half of the massive ABC Of The Blues box set, it almost feels like there's no end in sight... almost.

Volumes 27 and 28

Magic Sam
Samuel Gene Maghett was a Chicago Blues musician in the 1950s and 60s. He moved to Chicago in 1950 and quickly started to follow in the footsteps of Muddy Waters and others in the scene already. He didn't sign a record deal until 1957, and immediately started to get some attention, if not stardom. His career was short, only 12 years, before it was cut short by a hear-attack while on tour in 1969.

Magic Sam didn't use a standard 12-bar blues most of the time, and his higher pitched singing set him apart from most musicians - to me Magic Sam has always embodied exactly that kind of sound I think of when someone says Chicago Blues, a very urban sounding blues. Sadly, his section on this collection is only five songs, another musician where I wonder why they don't showcase more of his work, it's really worth finding some of his music and giving it a listen.

Jimmy McCracklin
Moving out west, Jimmy McCracklin was born in Missouri, but moving to Northern California after his stint in the navy during World War Two. Active since 1945 when he recorded his first single, Jimmy is a staple of West Cost Blues. Cool Fact: The Blasters was named after Jimmy's backup band The Blues Blasters.

Jimmy gets most of the attention on this volume with fifteen tracks. A lot of them some great slow, West Coast blues, a few of them delve closer to R&B and Jump Blues. Some really good stuff here, lots of good rainy-day blues from Jimmy.

Percy Mayfield
Percy started his career in Texas, but moved to California in 1942, and began to steadily put out music. Not quite in the same tradition of his contemporaries on the West Coast, he's primarily credited as being an R&B artist, his style is ballads and closer to his Texas roots of Country Blues. Percy's real claim to fame was his songwriting, signed on to Ray Charles' label after he wrote and recorded an early version of Hit The Road Jack. Percy spent most of his later years (after a car accident that limited his ability to tour) as a song writing instead of a blues player.

Ten, slow, blues ballads encompass Percy's contribution to the collection here. Sadly, we don't get the original recording of his own famous song, but we do get some lovely ballads. He really was a different kind of artist than his contemporaries on the west coast, and unfortunately his style caused him to fall into obscurity by the 1970s and he was nearly unknown by his death in 1984.

Johnny Moore's Three Blazers
Johnny Moore, Charles Brown (earlier seen in Volume 3 of this box set), and Eddie Williams were the Three Blazers, after Johnny moved to California in the mid 1930s and found the other two Texans there and formed the Three Blazers. They gained early exposure by backing Oscar Moore (Johnny's brother who was part of the Nat King Cole trio) and being billed with him instead of as Johnny Moore's. After Brown left the Blazers continued on with a succession of musicians and recorded until the 1960s. They never achieved any big amount of success and slowly slipped into obscurity.

The music is classic R&B and West Coast blues for the most part. The songs here nicely span the majority of their career pulling not just he early, more popular, songs with Brown. But a lot of later material with various other singers and artists. A very good and eclectic collection of smooth west coast R&B over about four decades of time.

Next weeks volumes include Memphis Minnie, Big Maybelle, Roy Milton, and Amos Milburn - digging deep into the blues.