Eddie Cusic - I Want To Boogie (1998/2020)

Eddie Cusic is the Mississippi bluesman who taught a young Little Milton Campbell to play. But until this 1998 debut, Cusic had amazingly gone unrecorded. This field recording, done live at Cusic's house, rectifies that situation and consequently brings another fine acoustic blues artist to the light. Cusic's music is pure Mississippi blues, and that stylistic derivation can't be stressed strongly enough. Even when Eddie is playing urban electric blues tunes like Muddy's "Hoochie Coochie Man," and Lowell Fulson's "Reconsider Baby," Willie Cobb's "You Don't Love Me" or Jimmy Reed's "Pretty Thing" (wrongly credited on this disc to Cusic), "You Don't Have to Go," or "Big Boss Man," the sound and style delivered is pure back-porch country-blues. The large part of his repertoire relies on old warhorses like "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl," "Ludella," "Feelin' Good," and "Catfish Blues," but the individual stamp Cusic brings to these old standbys with nothing more than his rough-hewn voice and simple but driving guitar makes this previously unrecorded bluesman a wonderful repository of tradition with his own wrinkle to it. A strong debut that also makes the first new "blues discovery" since the halcyon days of the 1960s.