Louisiana Red - Blues Classics (1996)

Louisiana Red was an extraordinary character. A huge man with a slow, deliberate manner, he was a brilliant songwriter who used the tragedies of his own experience to produce a vivid, visceral Blues. His technique on slide-guitar harked back to the Delta, but he played harp and finger-style electric guitar too, and often moved himself to tears with his passionate vocal delivery. It is surprising that he was not better known, as he performed almost continuously for more than fifty years and played with a host of legendary figures. Red released no less than fifty albums, as well as making countless guest recordings with his admirers. He was awarded a Grammy, and won a shower of awards in the last years of his life.

Born in rural Alabama in 1932, Iverson Minter’s mother died when he was a few days old and when he was nine, his father was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. His grandmother got him a guitar from a hock shop, and he would sing and play for change on streetcorners, and also learned Blues harp. He moved around some relatives’ homes, before heading north as a teenager, eventually ending up in Chicago where he recorded for the Checker label in 1949. For most of the 50s he was in the armed services, but by the end of the decade he was in John Lee Hooker‘s Detroit band performing as Louisiana Red. His first solo album, ‘Lowdown Back Porch Blues’ was issued in 1963 and sold well, prompting a follow-up album the same year. As well as interpreting some Blues classics, Red wrote chilling Blues songs based on his own life, delivered with a soulful voice and acoustic slide-guitar technique that spoke of the origins of the Blues, back in the Delta. He was always at his best performing alone so he could exploit his excentric sense of timing with utter freedom. It is strange that Red went almost un-noticed in the sixties Blues boom, but perhaps he was too young to be thought an authentic country Bluesman when seen alongside Skip James, Son House and their like.