Furry Lewis - Furry Lewis - Live at the Gaslight at the Au Go Go (2023)

Long out-of-print recording from the master of the bottleneck blues, capturing his first NYC live performance for 20 years, in 1971. Hailing from Greenwood, Mississippi, Walter E. "Furry" Lewis began recording in the late 1920s in Memphis, for Vocalion and RCA Victor. When the depression plummeted sales of country blues records, Furry suffered a fall from grace which saw him turn to making a living as a street cleaner at one stage. After being rediscovered by Sam Charters in the late Fifties, his music career was finally given a second wind in the sixties, and he escaped reliance on the Memphis sanitary department. This 1971 performance therefore captures him back at his best.

While informed by ragtime and Southern Tennessee blues influences, Lewis’ guitar technique is uniquely creative, and not strictly in the Mississippi delta tradition. He finds ways for percussion, melodic accompaniment and walking bass to manifest themselves in his use of the instrument.

This album was recorded at the Gaslight in New York City's Greenwich Village in September 1971, and was Furry's first New York show in well over twenty years. The show was managed by Jim Nash, who had learned of Furry Lewis from Jimi Hendrix several years earlier – making a case for Furry’s own unusual transportation of the guitar outside its traditional realm, to express African-American culture. The set makes its CD debut with this release.