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LYNWOOD
SLIM "LAST CALL"
Source: Living Blues
Magazine
Date: 08/2006
Writer: Lee Hildebrand |
Harmonica
was largely foreign to California blues during
the genre’s heyday from the mid-‘40s
to the late ‘60s, due in great degree to
the connection of many musicians to Texas, which
didn’t have much of a harmonica blues tradition.
Even George Smith, the greatest of the Southern
California based harp blowers, got little respect
on his home turf. Harmonica finally became prominent
in California blues during the ‘70s and
‘80s through the work of such young white
players as Rod Piazza, Rick Estrin, James Harman,
and Mark Hummel. Their bands at first modeled
their styles on Chicago blues of the Muddy Waters
variety, but the influence of jump blues and swing
jazz eventually gave their music a more distinctive
regional character.
Known professionally as Lynwood Slim, singer and
harmonica player Richard Duran was born in Los
Angeles in 1953 and initially became famous there
for his skills as a pool hustler. Relocating to
Minneapolis, he fell under the spell of Chicago
blues through contact with Big Walter Horton and
Windy City expatriate Baby Doo Caston and became
a professional bluesman. Slim’s father had
instilled a love of jazz in him early on, however,
and he began charting a stylistic course akin
that to his California contemporaries.
“Jazz and blues are different fleas on the
same dog,” Slim says in the notes to his
third CD. Recorded mostly in Southern California
with a revolving crew of likeminded players, including
guitarists Kid Ramos and Kirk Fletcher, Last Call
is primarily a showcase for Slim’s suave
vocals in an imaginatively varied set of blues,
jazz, and R&B numbers such as Clifton Chenier’s
All Night Long, Joe Turner’s Wee Baby Blues,
Mickey Baker’s I’m Tired, Duke Ellington’s
I Ain’t Got Nothin’ But The Blues,
the Five Royales’ Say It (cut in Chicago
with the Chicago Blues Angels), a Hot Club of
France’inspired treatment of the Billie
Holiday hit Me, Myself, And I, and the Bo Diddley
doo-wop tune I'm Sorry. The rhythm sections are
solid and swinging, though the absence of a keyboardist
on most numbers makes the ensemble textures somewhat
too thin. Slim picks up his harmonica on three
numbers he’s particularly commanding on
the Jimmy Reed style Across The Sea, written by
Slim and Ramos and even blows some nice flute
on another. |
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