Traveling Man
Northern Blues
Watermelon Slim's new recording is a 2-CD set of live solo performances of him on vocals, guitar, and harmonica. This album was co-produced by Slim with Chris Hardwick, who engineered these performances from The Blue Door in Oklahoma City, and The Depot in Norman, Oklahoma. With a career spanning five decades and many recordings, Slim remains a compelling performer, even without supporting musicians.
Slim worked as a forklift driver, funeral officiator, watermelon farmer, newspaper reporter, saw miller, and truck driver for industrial water, among others. From these experiences come some of his original songs. Many of these songs have traveling as a theme, including the originals "Blue Freightliner," "Truck Driving Songs," "Scalemaster Blues," and "300 Miles." Also traveling seems a theme of renditions of Fred McDowell's "61 Highway Blues," and "Frisco Line," and a mashup of Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lightning" with Muddy Waters' "Two Trains Running."
Even when performing well-known blues songs, Slim remakes them into his own as opposed to copying the original, with considerable improvisation in the lyrics. Besides his robust vocals, he impresses with his driving guitar playing, especially his very personal slide guitar style. On his reworking of Cat Iron's "Jimmy Bell," he adds some rowdy harmonica. A few numbers like "Into the Sunset" have more of a country music flavor to them, adding to the variety and appeal of this recording.
They talk about athletes giving it all and wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Much the same can be said of Watermelon Slim with his growling, gravelly-voiced vocals, and his propulsive rhythmic self-accompaniment. He wears his blues on his sleeves, and the result is this superb recording.
I received my review copy from a publicist. This review appeared in the March-April 2020 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 389). Here, from 2005, is Watermelon Slim performing "Smokestack Lightning."
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