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Living Blues
Home / Posts tagged "Living Blues"
Posted on March 4, 2017 by Jan Mittendorp
review Doug MacLeod in Living Blues
Categories: Doug MacLeod, review	Tags: acoustic blues, black & tan records, Living Blues
Live in Europe sounds really impressive, unless you are in Europe, where "Live in the USA" sounds more impressive. By now an elder statesman of the acoustic blues, singer-songwriter Doug MacLeod, known as "Dubb," took his National resonator guitar named "Spook" and headed over to Holland back in 2006. This is a reissue of a DVD originally recorded back then, when MacLeod was signed to Black & Tan Records. He recollects that he had a fever that day and he had only 50 percent of his voice. This is the raw recording of MacLeod, Spook and his stomping foot. "No overdubs, no pitch control, no do-overs. It was one night when one of our best and finest acoustic performers today wasn't feeling too good but went on stage anyway." If that weren't written here you would never know it. MacLeod is such a consummate professional, a superlative singer-songwriter and guitarist, a storyteller and performer, that the only thing you will notice is that this is a seasoned pro, a man who cut his teeth playing guitar for George "Harmonica" Smith. He's played with Big Joe Turner, Pee Wee Crayton, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Lowell Fulson and Big Mama Thornton. For three decades or so he has been an internationally successful touring musician, and if you don't know him as a player, maybe you know him as host of Nothin' But the Blues on Long Beach / Los Angeles' KLON-KKJZ. Top that with winning the 2016 Blues Music Award for best acoustic blues artist. On this album he is a bit more gentle than normal, delivering nine tunes. He starts off with one of his signature songs I Want You, with his classic pick-up line by now so often copied by lesser men, "I want you / don't you know I want you / every word is true / this man wants you." He does a 14-minute-long version of Bukka White's train song The New Panama Limited. He also delivers smooth versions of his standards Home Cooking, Cold Rain, Long Time Road, Turkey Leg Woman and Master Plan. Bad Magic is an homage to one of his early mentors, Ernest Banks of Toano, Virginia, a one-eyed bluesman who taught MacLeod, "Never play a note you don't believe." MacLeod surely took this advice to heart. As a performer and singer, MacLeod is simply unmatched. He interacts with the audience with plain talk, humor and natural "we're all neighbors and friends" dialogue. He plays a pounding, percussive heartbeat on the guitar, singing with his rich and vibrant voice. Another thing he learned from Ernest Banks is to play his National resonator guitars with such rhythmic force that his audience can't keep their feet still for wanting to dance. MacLeod remembers. "Ernest said, 'You have got to make them dance.' Because he said if they weren't dancing they weren't drinking, and if they weren't dancing and drinking, he wasn't going to get paid. So, you got to make them dance. The old bluesmen like Ernest Banks and Son House used to do that. Ernest said, 'You ain't shit unless you can make them dance.'" If there is one guy on the scene today who keeps the blues vibrant, fresh and new while keeping to the tradition and adding fiery and intensive original news songs, it's Doug MacLeod.
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