One of my favourite sets of CDs features good old, gritty blues. The sound is tremendously rough in places - like cheap whiskey and three-day stubble - these being early recordings of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Blind Willie McTell and the like, and I love it. Always makes me want to dance and open the bottle. I gave a quick nod to this collection in The Grease Monkey's Tale (pp 94-95), albeit under a different name, and mentioned a track where Big Joe Williams plays (appropriately for Nic the mechanic at that point in his story) Baby, Please Don't Go.
Thought it was about time I found the man on YouTube, so here he is, playing this song on a 9 string guitar, of all things.
Willie Dixon - another blues great - is conveniently quoted under this video:
"The blues is the roots. Everything else is the fruits."
