Snooks Eaglin - With His New Orleans Friends

This is a review that I wrote in Fall 2006 and published in the November-December 2006 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 288). I will be posting other reviews from this every few days in next couple weeks.

Universal Music on the Verve label has released the second batch of CDs in its series, The Sonet Blues Story. These sides make available albums from the 1970s that were issued in Europe on the Sonet label although some were imported in the United States and some were even issued in the US, as GNP-Crescendo issued The Legacy of the Blues recordings stateside. This latest batch includes more from that series along with other albums that Samuel Charters had produced for Sonet. I will be posting these reviews every few days.

Snooks Eaglin was represented by a prior volume in this series playing solo. The 1977 recordings represented on this latest album is With His New Orleans Friends who include the great Clarence Ford on tenor sax, George French on bass and background vocals, Bob French on drums and Ellis Marsalis on piano for a set of New Orleans R&B in the mode of Eaglin’s Imperial recordings.

The songs include Down Yonder, a Smiley Lewis number that Eaglin would keep in his repertoire decades later, Roscoe Gordon’s No More Doggin’, J.B. Lenoir's Talk to Your Daughter, Fats Domino’s Going to the River and Let the Four Winds Blow, James Wayne’s Traveling Mood (which Eaglin recorded for Imperial), Fat’s Domino’s Going to the River, and even Sir Mack Rice’s Mustang Sally (which comes off as tolerable in Eaglin’s hands. 

The band plays solidly behind Eaglin here, although not quite as inspired as the bands Snooks would have on his Black Top recordings. Charters notes how Eaglin insisted on his fuzzy tone for his guitar and there is plenty of his unique guitar playing with the band playing solidly behind him and these enjoyable sides foreshadows his spectacular Black Top recordings that started a decade later. 

I likely received review copies from Jazz & Blues Report. This may still be available new or used and as downloads. Here is a Snooks Eaglin performance