Artist:     Willie Buck

Album:     Willie Buck Way

Label:     Delmark

Release Date:     3.1.2019

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BUY DIGITAL

BUY PHYSICAL

Wille Buck, now an octogenarian, is one the few remaining original Chicago bluesmen. One of eight children and hailing from Mississippi, he arrived in Chicago in 1953 as a teenager, in the formative years of the Chicago electric blues scene. Having been snuck in to see Muddy Waters changed Buck’s perspective on just about everything and he’s carried that traditional Chicago sound with him to this day, carving his own niche in the city’s south and west side clubs. He’s been leading his own bands n Chicago for 50 years now.

We last heard a Buck on his 2012 recording, Cell Phone Man but his voice remains amazingly expressive, vibrant, and demonstrates a powerful upper range that belies his age. Here Buck offers a generous 17 tracks, mostly originals with covers of Muddy Waters and LeRoy Carr as well as an original by guitarist Billy Flynn “Can’t Say Something Good About Me.” The album takes its name from a street in Chicago named in his honor.

The other hand-picked musicians are among the best in traditional Chicago blues. Along with Flynn, Johnny “Fingers” Iguana’s barrelhouse piano is all over the record. Bob Stroger (bass) and JImmi Mayes (drums) form the rhythm section. Thaddeus Krolicki is a second guitarist and although Scott Dirks is the major harp man, Big Spider Beck (also piano on two tracks), and Mervyn “Harmonica” Hinds contribute on three and two, respectively.

As soon as you put this disc on, you hear the unmistakable classic Chicago blues sound with kicking originals like “You Want Me to Trust You,” the funky “Heck of a Time,” the illicit affair that does not take place on the dark end of the street but instead at the “Bottom of the Hill” counterbalanced by “The Men Ought to Learn (To Treat the Women Right).” Naturally we get a couple of covers from his main inspirer, Muddy Waters, with “Please Have Mercy” and “How Deep Is the Ocean.” Buck also covers Leroy Carr’s enduring classic “Blues Before Sunrise.”

Buck is one of the Chicago blues artists who never fairly got his due. Here he delivers the only music he’s ever truly loved with passion, clarity, and class. Normally, we’d use a word like “gritty” when describing Chicago blues, but somehow Buck brings a vibrancy and sophistication not often heard in the sound.

—Jim Hynes