Artist: Benny Turner and Cash McCall
Album: Going Back Home
Label: Nola Blue Records
Release Date: 1.19.2019
Going Back Home takes two top blues veterans back to their Chicago blues roots, reuniting Turner and McCall with a recording that really pushes all the best musical buttons. This is a genuinely wonderful release crammed to the seams with the best that R&B and soul music can offer. Maybe it needs a rejuvenation by a few old-timers from time to time to wake us up to the beauty and quality of older material, lyricism and sheer sideman genius.
These guys share a history and musical heritage that now spans three-score years, and the depth of experience and fervour for the music is always evident throughout the ten-tracks featured here. Songs covered include some old, well-worn greats from Elmore James’ “Shake Your Money Maker,” a true Chicago number that everyone probably knows well here given a blasting Memphis horn push that drives it along full-tilt, aided by Billy Branch who guests on the album, to a perfectly delivered, no-frills take on the classic, “Spoonful.”
Turner, band-member brother of blues giant, Freddie King, is a bassman of impeccable sense and touch, soulful and spirited with a voice that handles the material included here with total ease and command, while his old buddy McCall joins forces with fine guitar and vocal class. Recorded in New Orleans, Memphis and Chicago, the album features some of the USA’s finest blues and soul sidemen from Branch himself to drummer Rodd Bland (son of the late Bobby Blue) and keys by Joe Krown. The overall result is an album that is spirited and spiritually rewarding, a simply sensational pairing and release where two old friends revisit their Chicago club youth with clear passion. This is simply a sensational keeper.
—Iain Patience
Be the first to comment!