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The Blues Experience w/Cash McCall - The Vintage Room
Dixon Landing Music
Run Time: 46:23

Sometimes the blues run in the blood. This CD unites the first generation of postwar Chicago blues with the modern day offspring (literally) of today. Featuring Steve Bell (Carey Bell’s harmonica-playing son), Alex Dixon (piano-playing grandson of the great Willie Dixon) and the old school Cash McCall, this CD is a throwback and not a throw away.

Produced and mostly written by Alex Dixon, the album features Chicago Blues tried and true. Nothing fancy here. No wah-wah pedals, no special guitar effects, just the bare bones. Most of these themes and riffs you’ve heard before. However, these themes and riffs are coming from the source of their originality, handed down a generation of course.

McCall’s guitar and vocals sound like a seasoned veteran filled with raw emotion and informed living. McCall’s vocals are assured on the tired standard of “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” recorded here for the sake of posterity. As written by Dixon, McCall has performed the song for over 25 years in his live shows and never touched it in the studio. It shows. He has the vocal nuance of the once-famed partner of Dixon’s grandfather, Muddy Waters.

What Dixon has borrowed in melody from his grandfather he hasn’t stolen in songwriting. He talks of people’s zeal to get ahead in the world with “Slice of That Pie.” Bell’s harmonica soars up and above the stinging guitar and vocals of McCall. Always in the background adding the Otis Spann-like piano is Dixon. Dixon tells us a story about the modern-day Job from the Bible in “Catch Me Before I Go,” telling us of a man who has everything taken from him but instead of enduring, he runs off. “One Touch” talks about a man’s arrogance to get any woman he damn well pleases. “Gypsy Woman” is an interesting prequel (hey I thought they only had those in Star Wars movies) to the classic song “Hoochie Coochie Man” about what went on before he came around.

If you’re a traditional Chicago Blues fan and are itching for that old sound, this album is just as it states on the cover, vintage, in sound. This is coming from the source. No frills. Just straight ahead, no watered down blues lite here! Expect a lot more of this great sound from the second generation of Willie Dixon and his friends!

Album is available from CD Baby. Find out more about The Blues Experience at www.dixonlandingmusic.com  and www.CashMcall.com

Reviewer James “Skyy Dobro” Walker is a noted Blues writer, DJ and Blues Blast contributor. His weekly radio show “Friends of the Blues” can be heard each Thursday from 4:30 – 6:00pm on WKCC 91.1 FM in Kankakee, IL

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