Personnel: Howlin' Wolf (vocals, harmonica); Chris Barber (vocals, trombone); Jimmy Witherspoon, Ottilie Patterson (vocals); Hubert Sumlin, John Slaughter (guitar); Eddie Smith & the Hornets, Stu Morrison (banjo); Ian Wheeler (clarinet, alto saxophone); John Crocker (saxophone); Ronnie Scott's Quintet (tenor saxophone); Humphrey Lyttelton, Patrick Halcox (trumpet); Graham Burbridge (drums).
Recording information: The Manchester Free Trade Hall, England (05/31/1964-01/10/1980); The National Jazz & Blues Festival, Richmond, England (05/31/1964-01/10/1980); Theatre 'De Willem' Papendrecht, The Netherlands (05/31/1964-01/10/1980).
Authors: Chris Barber ; Howlin' Wolf; Long John Baldry.
Arranger: Chris Barber .
The first two volumes of this series were devoted to tapes, primarily of visiting American blues performers playing live in Britain, from the late 1950s and early '60s. This third installment lets the focus slide a little to the mid-'60s, with most of the material having been recorded in concert by Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, and Jimmy Witherspoon in England in 1964. Earlier tours by bluesmen like Muddy Waters had helped set the stage for an explosion of interest in the blues in the U.K., and by 1964 a bunch of British rock bands started by blues fans had started to experience international pop success. So such performances weren't as much of a novelty as they'd been a few years previously, but were still uncommon enough that they were enthusiastically welcomed. Nonetheless, they weren't the best settings for these major musicians. Williamson is backed by the trad jazz-inclined Chris Barber Band on May 31, 1964 Manchester set, and though the recordings he made around the same time with the Yardbirds and Animals might have been a little ragged, they're preferable to these, which amounted to something of a mismatch. Barber and his musicians worked better with the jazzier Witherspoon, whose three-song set from the National Jazz & Blues Festival on August 8, 1964 included "Times Getting Tougher Than Tough," "Have You Ever Loved a Woman?," and "Roll 'Em Pete." The four songs by Howlin' Wolf (from November 30, 1964) are the most exciting items on this set, but unfortunately are rather flatly recorded, though the Chris Barber Band's accompaniment is more sympathetic to him than to Williamson -- maybe they were getting a better idea for what was suitable for Chicago bluesmen as time went on. Ending the disc are five more performances by Witherspoon with Barber's band, recorded for Dutch radio on January 10, 1980. Recording quality is only fair or a little better throughout most of this disc, with the exception of the 1980 Witherspoon cuts (though that has what sounds like a tape snarl on "Everyday I Have the Blues"), helping to make this compilation more of a historical document than a representation of these legendary blues artists at their best. ~ Richie Unterberger
