Alligator Records will release 180 gram vinyl reissues of Buddy Guy’s Stone Crazy! and Professor Longhair’s Crawfish Fiesta on October 16, 2012. Both titles have been out of print on vinyl for 20 years and have been painstakingly remastered.
Stone Crazy! contains some of the most ferocious guitar playing of Guy’s storied career. At six songs and 40 minutes, Stone Crazy! is short, but strong, offering up some of Guy’s most incendiary houserockin’ performances. Rolling Stone says Stone Crazy! features “the artist at his frantic and frenzied best…savage guitar and fiery vocals.”
Crawfish Fiesta, featuring some of the best recorded performances of Fess’ long and storied career, contains a previously unreleased rehearsal track (Percy Mayfield’s River’s Invitation). The Village Voice calls Crawfish Fiesta “a masterpiece.”
Buddy Guy – Stone Crazy!
Available on vinyl for the first time in over 20 years!
Label: Alligator Records
Release Date: 16 October 2012
Tracks
1 I Smell A Rat 9:10
2 Are You Losing Your Mind? 6:33
3 You’ve Been Gone Too Long 5:39
4 She’s Out There Somewhere 4:30
5 Outskirts Of Town 5:06
6 When I Left Home 8:24
All songs Guy, G., Editions Black & Blue except as indicated.
Buddy Guy, Guitar and Vocals
Phil Guy, Guitar
J. W. Williams, Bass
Ray Allison, Drums
Produced by Didier Tricard
U. S. album production by Bruce Iglauer
Recorded at Condorcet Studios, Toulouse, France
Recorded October 31, 1979
Originally released in France on Isabel Records
LINER NOTES
This is the one. This is the album that his fans have been waiting for — the album that finally captures the raw, almost-out-of-control guitar genius of Buddy Guy. It’s simply Buddy and his own touring band — no studio musicians, no ”special guests”: just the solid skin-tight backing of brother Phil and one of Chicago’s hottest young rhythm sections. The tunes were cut in a studio in France, but they feel just like the last smoky set at the Checkerboard Lounge, Buddy’s own club in the heart of Chicago’s South Side.
Buddy’s fans have been waiting a long time. His last album, recorded with longtime partner Junior Wells, was an all-star jam featuring Eric Clapton, Dr. John and the J. Geils Band, but not really a guitar showcase for Buddy. In fact, it’s been fourteen years since the classic album, A Man And The Blues, when Buddy, inspired by the late keyboard wizard Otis Spann, really let go in the studio. It’s been twenty years since his wildman guitar and manic vocals were first heard on those great Chess 45s like The First Time I Met The Blues, My Time After Awhile and Stone Crazy.
It’s his frenzied live performances that have made Buddy legendary. First, during his years of residency at Theresa’s in Chicago, taking on every guitar player who passed through the Windy City. Then over a decade on the road with Junior, barnstorming through the U.S., Japan and Africa, and touring Europe with the Rolling Stones. He devastated the Montreux Jazz Festival, with the Stones sitting in. He’s won the admiration of everyone who ever tried to pick the blues on guitar, from B.B. King to Eric Clapton. And always the question –“When will Buddy really cut loose like those blazing nights on the bandstand, and get crazy again on a record?”
Here’s the answer.
Professor Longhair – Crawfish Fiesta
Available on vinyl for the first time in over 20 years!
WINNER OF THE 1980 BLUES MUSIC AWARD FOR “CONTEMPORARY BLUES ALBUM OF THE YEAR”
Label: Alligator Records
Release Date: 16 October 2012
Tracks
1 Big Chief 3:13
2 Her Mind Is Gone 4:23
3 Something On Your Mind 4:10
4 You’re Driving Me Crazy 2:34
5 Red Beans 4:09
6 Willie Fugal’s Blues 2:03
7 It’s My Fault, Darling 4:54
8 In The Wee Hours 3:23
9 Cry To Me 3:35
10 Bald Head 2:58
11 Whole Lotta Loving 3:46
12 Crawfish Fiesta 3:10
13 BONUS REHEARSAL TRACK: River’s Invitation * 3:14
All songs Byrd, Professor Longhair Music except as indicated.
* Remastered with bonus track previously unavailable, Percy Mayfield’s “River’s Invitation”
Produced by Bruce Iglauer, Andy Kaslow and Allison Kaslow
LINER NOTES
“Professor Longhair put “funk” into music; he’s the father of the stuff.”–Dr. John
“He’s the Bach of rock.”–Allen Toussaint
“He’s a seminal force, a guru, and original creator of the New Orleans piano style…the teacher of great players like Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, Mac Rebennack, James Booker and Huey Smith. All acknowledge him as The Great Master.”–Jerry Wexler
New Orleans is like no other place on earth. It’s a city where funerals automatically turn into street parades, where clubs stay open twenty four hours a day and the music flows from noon to eight a.m., where black men celebrate Mardi Gras by dressing in full Indian regalia and dance through the streets chanting “Iko Iko.” It’s a city where having a party has been elevated from a casual pastime to a way of life.
Henry Roseland Byrd, a.k.a. Professor Longhair, is the heart and soul of New Orleans. His music has been called everything: rock and roll, blues, calypso, jazz, funk, Afro-Cuban…and it is. But mostly, it’s party music. “Nobody has to stand in line,” he sings. “Come on inside and have a good time.” One weekend in November, 1979, “Fess” brought his whole band and his protege Mac Rebennack in to Sea-Saint Studios to have a good time. He reigned supreme from the piano bench, pounding out funky licks, rocking in his seat, crooning like a seductive lounge singer, then breaking into his trademark yodel like an adolescent boy whose voice is changing. And every song was propelled by the second line beat–that utterly infectious, impossible-to-describe rhythm originally created by the mob of dancers that followed Crescent City funeral parades. The rhythm that has saturated all true New Orleans music from King Oliver to The Meters.
It was in those same street parades that the young Roy Byrd danced for tips during the early 1930’s. With his playmates Streamline Isaac and Harrison Hike, he would clog step, somersault and sidestep four feet up the building walls, turn, and walk back down again. “The very first instrument I played was the bottom of my feet, workin’ out rhythms, tap dancing,” Byrd recalls. “We used to dance all up and down Bourbon Street.”
Dancing in the streets outside local taverns gave Byrd his first chance to hear the barrelhouse piano men who influenced his style: Kid Stormy Weather, Sullivan Rock, Archibald, Robert Bertrand, and especially Tuts Washington. Byrd’s mother, herself a professional musician, encouraged him to experiment, first on guitar, then on piano. But he didn’t take his music seriously until he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1937 and discovered he could avoid drilling and virtually all other work by playing piano for other Corps members in the recreation hall.
When he returned home, Byrd found that there were more profitable ways of making a living than music. He worked first as a cook, then as a boxer, and finally found his niche as a professional card player. It wasn’t until the late 1940’s that he returned to music, and earned his famous nickname. Dave Bartholomew (who later wrote and produced Fats Domino’s biggest hits) was leading a hot band at the Caldonia Club and drawing the biggest crowds in the city. Byrd dropped by one night, and when Bartholomew’s piano man took a break, asked if he could play a few numbers. He was an immediate sensation, pulling in crowds off the street. Mike Tessitore, the manager, fired Bartholomew on the spot and hired Byrd. Byrd remembers, “We had Big Slick on drums, Apeman Black on sax, and Walter Nelson on guitar. We had long hair in those days, and it was almost against the law. Mike says, ‘I’m gonna keep you guys and call you Professor Longhair and the Four Hairs Combo.'”
Over the next few years, Professor Longhair became one of New Orleans’ most popular entertainers, rivalling Fats Domino, Paul Gayten, Annie Laurie and Larry Darnell. In 1949 he cut his first (and biggest) record, Bald Head, for Mercury, and during the following years cut for half a dozen labels under a variety of names–Roy Byrd and His Blues Jumpers, Roy “Bald Head” Byrd, Professor Longhair and His Blues Scholars, Profesor Longhair and the Clippers, and the immortal “Professor Longhair and His Shuffling Hungarians.” (“I had one Hindu in the band, but there were no Hungarians.”) His sessions produced classic songs like Tipitina, Hey Now, Baby, In The Night, Big Chief and the greatGoing To The Mardi Gras (which is still played on local radio stations).
Longhair was offered tours after the release of almost every record but consistently chose to remain at home, playing the Caldonia Pepper Pot and other local clubs. He became famous for his outlandish stage costumes (tuxedos with red gloves and feathers, Army fatigues, etc.) and his habit of kicking the beat on the front of the piano until the instrument splintered. But his recording career fell off in the early ’60s and he eventually went back to other jobs–still playing in New Orleans, though making a living at cards.
Still, his fans didn’t forget him. His songs were popularized by a new star named Dr. John, who a few years before had been Mac Rebennack, Longhair’s studio guitarist. Atlantic reissued some of Fess’ early sides in 1972, and he was asked to play the Louisiana Jazz & Heritage Festival. His appearances there caused a sensation, just like his 1949 gigs at the Caldonia Club. People who weren’t even born when Bald Head was a hit claimed the Professor as their idol. He toured Europe, headlining the 1973 Montreaux Jazz Festival. Paul McCartney flew him to California in 1975 to play an exclusive private party on the Queen Mary. Today he is hailed as the father of the New Orleans Sound. He appears regularly on local and national television, is quoted in scholarly journals, and his picture is seen everywhere in the city. He even has a club, Tipitina’s, named after one of his greatest songs.
If New Orleans is the home of the Eternal Party, then Professor Longhair has become the house band for a whole city.
–Tad Jones and Mindy Giles
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