Blind Dog Radio

Winter Time Blues by Lightnin' Slim

Label: Ace Records
Release Date: May, 1998
Releases: 1998, 2002, 2003
Recording Time: 65 minutes
Recording Date: May, 1954 - 1971
Compilation Studio Recording

Styles: Regional Blues, Swamp Blues, Louisiana Blues

Winter Time Blues collects some of Lightnin' Slim's later singles for the Excello label, and while it might be hard to believe, these tracks sound positively lush when placed next to his earlier sides. Not that anything here is too fancy, but these songs at least have recorded basslines (the early singles were just Slim on electric guitar and vocals, accompanied by a drummer and a harmonica player, usually Lazy Lester) and the occasional added wash of an organ for texture. Truthfully, part of Slim's appeal is his nerve-bare starkness, and these later tracks show less of that, although the chilling bayou voodoo of "I'm Evil," included here, makes it one of his most powerful songs.
by Steve Leggett

Ace Records:
We come with a bang, not a whimper, to the final volume in our Lightnin' Slim reissue series. Just listen in particular to the first nine tracks on this CD, and you will find some of the greatest down-home blues cut anywhere, anytime. It's all there - Lightnin's guttural vocals, Lazy Lester's emphatic harmonica, blues songs that are well-crafted, with sympathetic production work from Jay D Miller in his studio in deepest South Louisiana.
Lightnin' had the remarkable ability to personalise his work to the extent that everything he did was indelibly his own. Take a look at the lyrics of his classic Winter Time Blues (a southern regional hit in early 1963):

Yes, the little girl is just 16 years old
How'd you find out, Lightnin' (interjection by Lazy Lester) 
I eavesdropped and heard her mother said 
You know, she got a way of huggin' and kissin' 
She'll bring livin' back to the dead.

By the mid-1960s the down-home blues was on the way out as a commercial entity with the black audience of the South-.-soul music was sweeping in with the hip young sounds of the day. Producer Jay Miller did try to update Lightnin' Slim's style by introducing organs and breaking away from the standard 12-bar format, which as liner note writer Dave Sax recalls did bring moans of emotional distress' from Lightnin's keen British collectors at the time. However, Dave admits that a retrospective look...reveals positive aspects as well.
Indeed the final Excello session is as blue as can be, climaxing with a remake of his first hit Bad Luck Blues from 1954. As Sax notes, So much had changed and yet nothing had changed...these are songs about jail and the workhouse, restlessness and wondering.
by John Broven

Credits: Bill Gaither - composer; Otis V. Hicks - composer; Silas Hogan - composer; Lightnin' Slim - primary artist; J.D. Miller - composer; Dave Sax - discography, liner notes; Monroe Vincent - composer; Jerry West - composer; Sonny Boy Williamson II - composer.

Tracks: 1) Mind Your Own Business; 2) Wintertime Blues; 3) Bad Luck Is Falling; 4) I'm Warning You Baby; 5) You're Old Enough To Understand; 6) I'm Evil; 7) If You Ever Need Me; 8) Lonely Stranger aka Rocky Mountain Blues; 9) You Give Me The Blues; 10) You Know You're So Fine; 11) Don't Mistreat Me Baby; 12) You Move Me Baby; 13) The Strangest Feelin'; 14) Lonesome Cabin Blues; 15) Don't Start Me Talkin'; 16) I Hate To See You Leave; 17) Sittin' And Thinkin'; 18) Darlin' You're The One; 19) Baby Please Come Back; 20) I've Been A Fool For You Darling; 21) Can't Live This Life No More; 22) I Can Hear My Baby Calling; 23) A Stranger In Town; 24) Bad Luck Blues.