Billy Boy Arnold - Chicago Blues From Islington Mews 1977 (2013)

Billy Boy Arnold (born William Arnold, September 16, 1935, Chicago, Illinois) is a leading American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter.
Often miscredited for writing "I Ain't Got You", written by Calvin Carter

The record sends us back 40 years - a real document of the era. Billy Boy Arnold, a black harper and singer, rolled from his America to London in October 1977, because in his homeland the music business was neither alive nor dead. It felt bad then not only for Billy Boy, but for the whole blues as a whole. In Europe, too, was not the season for him. However, the indefatigable Tony McPhee and his The Groundhogs continued to hit one spot and even performed in punk clubs and made records. So on that stormy October evening in a West London studio, the real outcasts of show business met and recorded a joint album. Now the outcasts have become classics, and the current producers have lifted the archive and presented a brilliant hybrid of "underground" English blues-rock and Chicago blues. The disc consists almost entirely of Arnold's old hits, which in this performance have been distributed on compilations and bootligs, and now, after a long oblivion, they have been released in their entirety and in tolerable quality. Tony - nervous, sharp, charged with adrenaline; Arnold is an embodied tradition, turned under the influence of an Englishman into an evil blues fun. 15 tracks of acid blues leave a mixed feeling of vivacity and decadence.