Goin' Down To Louisiana (2012)

Tracklist
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01. Can't Hardly Keep From Crying - Juke Boy Bonner
02. I'm Not Jiving - Juke Boy Bonner
03. My Time To Go - Juke Boy Bonner
04. Life Is A Dirty Deal - Juke Boy Bonner
05. Let's Boogie - Juke Boy Bonner
06. Just Got To Take A Ride - Juke Boy Bonner
07. Going Crazy About You - Juke Boy Bonner
08. Blue River Rising - Juke Boy Bonner
09. Need Shorter Hours - Ashton Savoy
10. Want To Talk To You Baby - Ashton Savoy
11. Tell Me Baby - Ashton Savoy
12. I Love Her So - Al Smith
13. If I Don't See You - Al Smith
14. You Wanna Do Me Wrong - Al Smith
15. Burning Sensation - Al Smith
16. Down, Down - Al Smith
17. Life's Journey - Tal Miller
18. Mean Old Kokamoo - Tal Miller
19. That Wouldn't Satisfy - Hop Wilson and his Buddies
20. Chicken Stuff - Hop Wilson
21. The Dog And His Puppies - Big Chenier
22. Going To The City - Big Chenier
23. Let Me Hold Your Hand - Big Chenier
24. Please Try To Realize - Big Chenier
25. I Wanna Know, I Know Now - Big Chenier
26. Come On Little Girl - Big Chenier
27. Call Me Juke Boy - Juke Boy Bonner
28. True Love's Waiting - Juke Boy Bonner
29. B-A-B-Y - Tal Miller
30. Rooster Strut - Ashton Savoy


The Goldband label recorded a decent share of down-home Louisiana blues between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, with 30 such outings from the period collected onto this CD. It didn't have any Lousiana masters on the order of Slim Harpo, but the material on this disc still makes for acceptable genre fare. While about a third of it appeared on the 1965 Storyville LP The Louisiana Blues, the rest of it did not; ten tracks were previously unissued, and some of the others didn't surface until they appeared on compilations in the 1990s. Certainly the best-known of these cuts are the ones by Juke Boy Bonner, who made effectively moody, grungy electric blues, usually with sluggish rhythms on the ten selections here. The collection also includes material by Ashton Savoy, Al Smith, Tal Miller, Hop Wilson, and Big Chenier that's not as interesting as Bonner's offerings, but has its moments. Most often their electric blues, like Bonner's, has a swampy feel, with Al Smith putting much more vibrato on his voice than most bluesmen do. Hop Wilson gets a great wiggly steel sound on "That Wouldn't Satisfy," and his boogie "Chicken Stuff" is a previously unissued alternate take. Big Chenier, incidentally, is not a pseudonym for Clifton Chenier, although he was Clifton Chenier's uncle. His sound is not zydeco, but a cross between R&B and blues, with just a touch of zydeco influence (most notably on "Come on Little Girl," on which he plays fiddle).

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