Jerry McCain – Jerry McCain’s Blues Party
Wolf Records – 2024
17 tracks; 70 minutes
This release from Austrian label Wolf brings together a range of recordings made by The King Bees, a band from North Carolina who backed a lot of black artists over 40 years in the music business. Of all the guys with whom they played, the band rated Alabama harp player Jerry ‘Boogie’ McCain as the top of the tree. Led by guitarist Rob Baskerville and bassist/vocalist Penny Zamagni, these tracks feature three different drummers, Russ Wilson, Mike Rhodes and Dave Barbour. The material contains both studio and live recordings, most involving Jerry McCain on harp and vocals, some with the King Bees, some solo. The exceptions are four live recordings of the King Bees, two with Nappy Brown, two with Chick Willis. There are no dates given for the recordings but, Jerry passed in 2012, Chick in 2013 and Nappy in 2008, so it is probably safe to assume that they span the 1990’s and early 2000’s.
Jerry wrote twelve of the songs presented here. There are three solo tracks, all quite short: Jerry pays tribute to his “Hotrod Ford” on a toe-tapping tune, mainly vocal with touches of harp; the slower paced “Let Me Tell You Pretty Baby” is just over a minute of slow blues with harp interjections between all the vocal lines; Jerry has a girl that is not so good round the house, but “You Knows How To Love”, so all is well! On “Mama’s Pride” Jerry performs a mainly spoken vocal with string accompaniment, certainly a different feel to the rest of the tracks here, his ethereal harp towards the end of the track sounding almost like a flute. Jerry and Rob combine on the leisurely-paced “I Got The Blues All Over Me” and “I Got To Go Home”, the latter featuring some excellent harp playing set against Rob’s solid guitar work.
Five tracks featuring Jerry are band performances with The King Bees. “Boogie Buzz” is an instrumental written by Rob and lives up to its title with exciting harp from the main man, the rest of the band filling out the sound really well. Four live cuts start with “I Used To Have It”, Jerry playing to the crowd in his spoken intro about his first wife who “took it with her the day she walked out the door”. Jerry’s best known song is “She’s Tough”, famously covered by the Fabulous Thunderbirds and he revisits it here in a slower version than the T-Birds’, to the acclaim of the crowd, as he plays around with it and states that his version must be the best, as he wrote it! There is some tough guitar as Jerry sets the scene for how he believes we should deal with the drug problem – “Burn The Crack House Down”! Finally “Blues Tribute” wraps up a few lines from familiar sources such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Junior Parker and, of course, his own “Tough Enough” gets a reprise amongst them! Bassist Penny handles the vocals on two of her own songs. Jerry plays a storm on “Cool It”, a stop-start R&B number, while “Back Door Lovin’” has Rob playing slide with Jerry stepping out from sideman duties to nail the central solo.
The four remaining tracks do not involve Jerry at all, but are The King Bees backing Chick Willis and Nappy Brown. All are covers, the Chick tracks being Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Hello Central”, a slow blues with plenty of good guitar work from both Chick and Rob, and Elmore James’ “Look On Yonder Wall”, clearly played as an intro to Chick’s arrival on stage where he plays some fine guitar, backed by Rob’s solid rhythm work. Big Maceo’s “Worried Life Blues” is the longest cut here, Nappy Brown giving a solid vocal performance, as he also does on “Who Told You”, written by Bernard Roth; shame that Jerry was not on hand to add some harp, as this one was originally a success for Little Walter.
Jerry McCain was an interesting character and the extensive liner notes give a good account of his personality, but what interests us most is the music: the recording quality is good and allows us to hear not only Jerry in his element but also some snippets of Chick Willis and Nappy Brown. Well worth your attention, especially for fans of Jerry McCain.
