Got his mojo workin'

I was in my favourite record store looking for Christmas presents, when I saw this:


One of the many reasons to shop at Einklang is that you can listen to CDs before buying them, so I popped it onto a player and pressed Start. Six seconds later, I pressed Stop and cried "Sold!" (in German, of course). That's a first for me, I usually skip through all the tracks on a CD before deciding.

This is a terrific album. Very simple: just solo acoustic-guitar (with a considerable amount of bottleneck slide) and some damn fine preacher-man singing. The obvious point of comparison is Robert Johnson, and indeed popular mythology says that Son House taught Johnson to play slide.

This recording was made in 1965, but the sound is very good. Clearly some uncredited person has spent a good deal of time and effort cleaning it up: you hear not only the notes being played, but also the faint mechanical sounds of the plectrum and the slide rubbing against the strings.

I still haven't got those Christmas presents: this CD is a keeper.