Track Listing

1. Climbing on Top of the Hill
2. Louise
3. My Father's Words
4. Backwater Blues
5. Wine Headed Woman
6. Careless Love
7. Playing with the Blues
8. I Can't Sleep at Night
9. My Baby's Leavin'
10. Lose Your Money
11. Jet Plane Blues
12. Rainy Day
13. I'm a Stranger Here
14. Women on My String
15. One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer
16. Key to the Highway
17. You'd Better Mind
18. Walk On

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22011 in Music
• Released on: 1999-06-29
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live

Amazon.com
Few blues partnerships were ever as successful and satisfying as the union of Sonny Terry's down-home harmonica work and Brownie McGhee's polished guitar lines. This generous, 18-tune live session catches the late acoustic blues brothers in their physical prime and at their musical best, rolling through an energetic set of conversational blues with casual virtuosity and seemingly telepathic interplay. Terry, a stone-cold traditionalist, contributes a raw-boned, backwoods feel with his heavily textured singing and harp solos while the modern McGhee's smooth vocals and clean picking provide a perfectly compatible counterpoint and complement. Either artist could carry the show by himself, but when the divergent styles musically intertwine they create a wonderful blues synthesis unlike any other the blues has known. The dynamic duo jumps right in with a reconfigured rendition of "Sittin' on Top of the World" and doesn't let up until the end. With Terry whooping and hollering between harp breaks and McGhee opening songs with comic asides the session is an unusually personable one. It's all undeniably authentic and eminently enjoyable, as well as positive blues proof that on very rare and fortunate occasions the whole is much greater than just the sum of the two parts. --Michael Point

Customer Reviews

From a man who loves the blues:
Friends, you cannot find old-school blues better than Backwater Blues. Sonny & Brownie's strained partnership has produced many excellent recordings, of which I believe this is the best. This album is the way the blues were meant to be played: just the simple, old-style tunes; just two men, two microphones, a guitar, and a harmonica. No fancy electronics, no prettyboy singers, just ol' Backwater Blues. If that's the way you like your blues, then get this album, sit back on a hot summer day, and play it all the way through!

One of the best Terry/McGhee-albums
A fine companion to the classic "Sonny & Brownie At Sugar Hill", this is a great buy for those who treasure Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee's brand of no-nonsense porch-style get-down blues.

The duo performs old warhorses like "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer", "Key To The Highway", and "Careless Love", and they change "Sittin' On Top Of The World" to "Climbin' On Top Of The Hill, which doesn't make it anymore interesting, but even though the material is not always particularly original, the performances are sincere and spirited, and this CD includes great renditions of two of the duo's very best songs, "Walk On" and the classic "I'm A Stranger Here".

The clarity of the recording and the singing is pure as the driven snow, with no distortion or compression, and while "Backwater Blues" doesn't quite match "Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee At Sugar Hill" or the great, raw "Live At The Penelope Café" album for pure grit, it has more than enough highlights to make it worth your while. Fans of the duo should not pass this one by.

Great CD
I would recommend this to any lover of the blues, great guitar, vocals and harmonica, totally cool!