![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/jerry_mccain.jpg\")
Born in rural Alabama in 1930, blues singer and harpist Jerry McCain developed the skills and fortitude to hold his own alongside artists like Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson. Through the course of his career, McCain would record for a number of labels including Excello and Okeh.<\/p>\n
McCain was a colorful character; as vividly recounted in an entertaining and fascinating liner note essay by guitarist Rob Baskerville and bassist Penny \u201cQueen Bee\u201d Zamagni of the King Bees, he never went anywhere without his trusty 9mm pistol \u201cMiss 9.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those liner notes paint a helpful picture of Jerry McCain, and establish the longtime personal and professional links between him and the King Bees. What they fortunately do not do \u2013 nor does any of the other information printed on or included with the CD \u2013 is tell listeners much of anything about the recordings featured therein.<\/p>\n
What can be gleaned from the package is that the 17 songs are a mixture of McCain originals, King Bees tunes, and a handful of well-chosen blues classics\/standards. All tracks date from 1991 to 1993. The package notes \u2013 after a fashion \u2013 the personnel involved on each track, but at least some of the information is a bit suspect. The ballad \u201cMama\u2019s Pride<\/i>,\u201d for example, is credited to \u201cJerry McCain with strings.\u201d That said, there\u2019s a guitar and rhythm section accompanying McCain\u2019s vocal, and the \u201cstrings\u201d are clearly an electronic keyboard. No word on who\u2019s responsible for the brief flute (or keyboard flute) solo.<\/p>\n
Some tracks don\u2019t feature McCain at all. Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins\u2019 \u201cHello Central\u201d<\/i> is a live recording credited to Chick Willis and the King Bees. It\u2019s essentially a bootleg, albeit one of passable fidelity. As such, it has little to the purported theme of the set, but it\u2019s an appealing reading of the song nonetheless. Nappy Brown is accompanied by the King Bees on two live tracks, and the fidelity of those cuts is excellent.<\/p>\n
The most thrilling and upbeat moments on Jerry McCain\u2019s Blues Party<\/i>, however, do indeed feature the man himself. The saucy instrumental \u201cBoogie Buzz\u201d<\/i> features some top-notch soloing by Baskerville and McCain, sometimes alternating, sometimes playing all at once, gleefully tearing through sharp licks. An album full of tunes like this would have been a real treat.<\/p>\n
But viewed more as an historical artifact, a document of an artist whose work deserves to be remembered, listened to and admired, Jerry McCain\u2019s Blues Party<\/i> is fine enough on its own merits. To that end, the four most notable cuts on the set are originals, and feature nothing but McCain\u2019s voice and harmonica. Strikingly spare, those recordings capture and preserve what made McCain special. And those four songs, highlighted by \u201cHotrod Ford<\/i>,\u201d more than justify the existence of this collection.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re going to have a party, someone\u2019s got to bring the excitement. And at key points on this archival collection of recordings \u2013 part of Wolf\u2019s Greatest Blues Songs series \u2013 Jerry McCain does just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Born in rural Alabama in 1930, blues singer and harpist Jerry McCain developed the skills and fortitude to hold his own alongside artists like Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,49,65],"tags":[5594],"class_list":["post-28775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-new-release","category-review","tag-jerry-mccain","cat-9-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28777,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28775\/revisions\/28777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}