Artist: Barbecue Bob
Album: Chocolate To The Bone
Release: 1992 (Recorded 1927? 1931?)
Label: Yazoo
Tracklist:
1. Motherless Child Blues
2. Spider And The Fly
3. Yo Yo Blues
4. Mississippi Heavy Water Blues
5. California Blues
6. She's Coming
7. Barbecue Blues
8. When The Saints Go Marching In
9. Ease It To Me Blues
10. Poor Boy A Long Ways From Home
11. Diddle-Da-Diddle
12. Going Up The Country
13. Atlanta Moon
14. Good Time Rounder
15. It's Just Too Bad
16. Twistin' Your Stuff
17. Chocolate To The Bone
18. Black Skunk Blues
19. Jacksonville Blues
20. She Shook Her Gun
Growing up, my mother would listen almost exclusively to old blues, jazz, and hard funk. I remember being relatively ambivalent to most of it at a very young age until puberty cruelly bestowed a permanent state of awkwardness upon me. Fortunately, with mutated voice and unfortunate facial hair came a new found interest in music, particularly all the stuff my parent's had listened to growing up.
One summer day, as I was digging through my mother's collection, I stumbled upon a CD with a cover of a man dressed in all-white bearing a shit-eating grin with the name Barbecue Bob. I laughed. I figured it would be horrible, but I tried it out anyway. As always, my first impression was horribly wrong! As it turned out, Barbecue Bob (a.k.a. Robert Hicks) was an essential figure in Atlanta blues and it wasn't hard to see why.
Fulfilling almost every stereotype you can think of for old bluesmen, BBQ Bobby lived fast and died young (before the age of 30!), all while singing tales of lost love, dying family, a bunch of nasty shit he wants to do to/for women (seriously, why are old bluesmen so filthy???), and just sorrow and misery, in general. Some might find some of it sophomoric, but the way in which Hicks combines local folklore with sexual humor is extremely effective and, ultimately, smacks of undying defeat. It's pretty compelling stuff and it perfectly compliments his masterful 12-string bottleneck guitar playing.
This is one of my favorite old blues collections and I can't recommend it enough.
Download Here
One summer day, as I was digging through my mother's collection, I stumbled upon a CD with a cover of a man dressed in all-white bearing a shit-eating grin with the name Barbecue Bob. I laughed. I figured it would be horrible, but I tried it out anyway. As always, my first impression was horribly wrong! As it turned out, Barbecue Bob (a.k.a. Robert Hicks) was an essential figure in Atlanta blues and it wasn't hard to see why.
Fulfilling almost every stereotype you can think of for old bluesmen, BBQ Bobby lived fast and died young (before the age of 30!), all while singing tales of lost love, dying family, a bunch of nasty shit he wants to do to/for women (seriously, why are old bluesmen so filthy???), and just sorrow and misery, in general. Some might find some of it sophomoric, but the way in which Hicks combines local folklore with sexual humor is extremely effective and, ultimately, smacks of undying defeat. It's pretty compelling stuff and it perfectly compliments his masterful 12-string bottleneck guitar playing.
This is one of my favorite old blues collections and I can't recommend it enough.
Download Here
-Adam
5 comments:
This may be the best cover art I have ever seen.
I remember you bringing this into music theory one day in highschool.
-Johnny B
just went and bought this cd. best blog i have seen in ages.
"we sure got hard times" is an enduring anthem. long live barbecue bob!
Thanks great blog!
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