Long Way from Home

Bad Boy	I Feel So Bad	My Heart Is Bleeding	Mess of Blues	Highway Is My Home
Is It News This may be the best roadhouse-rock-and-blues-guitar album a drummer's ever made. But then again, this 40-year-veteran Austin songwriter's always had an affinity for guitarists. His first band, the Chessmen, featured Jimmie Vaughan and opened for Jimi Hendrix. Bramhall cowrote ni...	Live Bootleg Series Volume Three Like any life-changing, chromosome-rearranging event, all guitar fans remember theirfirst time seeing Johnny Winter perform live. For me, the year was 1973, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Johnny was then embarking on his Still Alive and Well comeback tour. Appearing o...	Live Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 Johnny Winter has been flattening audiences since he blew out of Texas like a white tornado in 1968. At the tail end of the blues revival when British blues rockers were co-opting America's only indigenous art form, Johnny staked his claim to the title of reigning blues guitar he...	Born to Play the Blues	Breakin' It Up & Breakin' It Down Muddy Waters had his second coming 30 years ago, when longtime friend and disciple Johnny Winter and his Blue Sky label returned him--after a series of listless recordings aimed at the rock audience--to the raw, powerful authenticity of his timeless Chess material with a series o...

Horrible Blues Album
Firstly, I'm a huge fan of Eddie Taylor. I love his work with Jimmy Reed and I have his "I Feel So Bad" album. The problem with this disc is not the guitar work, but the lazy vocals, and absence of lyrics. Throughout the entire album, Taylor unsuccessfully improvises lyrics that do not rhyme. Sometimes, when the response (as in the Call & Response lyrical format of the Blues) is supposed to be given, Taylor just mumbles something incoherently. Did he regularly perform like this in a live setting? The "I Feel So Bad" album has some great lyrics, so I'm a bit confused by this release. Though I disagree completely with the other reviewer, I'd like if it he/she could address my questions about the terrible lack of lyrical originality on this album.

A fine live album from an underrated performer
Singer/guitarist Eddie Taylor played rhythm guitar behind Jimmy Reed on numerous waxings, but as a solo performer he never achieved anything like the commercial succes of Reed, who regularly outsold men like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. That was not due to any lack of talent, however. Eddie Taylor (1923-1985) was a supremely versatile blues guitarist, equally capable of playing the greasiest, grittiest grooves imaginable, and tearing off into a burning single-string solo. And he was a strong, expressive singer as well...perhaps the only thing missing was the kind of exceptional material that Willie Dixon penned for Waters and Wolf (and which they, along with men like Elmore James and Rice Miller, were perfectly capable of churning out on their own). Eddie Taylor was a great songwriter when his muse was in, but he seemed to have a hard time coming up with enough truly excellent material to compete with the exceptionally prolific Willie Dixon and that force of nature Aleck "Rice" Miller. On this aptly titled 1977 live recording (it was cut in Japan), Taylor is backed by brothers Louis and David Myers on 2nd guitar and bass guitar respectively, and by veteran drummer Odie Payne, a powerful, versatile percussionist who played with everybody who was anybody on the Chicago blues scene at one time or another. The set opens with Eddie Taylor's classic 1955 single "Bad Boy", and other highlights include the fiery "You're Gonna Look For Me", the swaggering groove of "There'll Be A Day", a smouldering "Blow Wind Blow" (not the Muddy Waters-song), and a slow, yet very muscular "My Sometimes Baby" which prominently features Odie Payne. Also, Taylor and Louis Myers both get off a couple of great solos on "Going Down Slow" (that's Eddie Taylor in the right speaker), and this rendition of "Crossroads" is one of the finest electric versions of that classic song I have ever heard. Taylor even sounds like Robert Johnson. There is a lot of sizzling blues guitar playing here, and some wonderful drumming by Odie Payne as well. The sound is fine, and the liner notes are quite good. And "Long Way From Home" is a really enjoyable live album by one of the finest, most talented sidemen on the Chicago blues scene, the great Eddie Taylor.