James Peterson Don’t Let The Devil Ride

James Peterson
Don’t Let The Devil Ride

Waldoxy



I remember the first time I saw James Peterson. It was a Main Street Buffalo, New York club, the Sunset Inn, and James led a quartet with a young teenage Lucky Peterson on keyboards, another son on drums and a bass player. There were a few bum notes but when James sang How Blue Can You get, or did a medley starting with Cummins Prison Farm, he would call out to someone in the club and get the crowd responding. While a capable guitarist, it was as a singer, that James grabbed me. Lucky’s a phenom, having natural pitch and a monster instrumentalist whose developing into a vocalist. But, even if James lacked his son’s gifts, he is a singer who grabs and holds the listener. 



Waldoxy has produced the first full album by James which showcases his singing with some funk grooves, although, oddly it is also the first of his albums on which his son does not play. James authored most of the songs with the title track offering a bit of folk wisdom at odds with the notion of the blues as the devil’s music. Children Gotta Eat is a nice soulful number which deals with a woman too busy providing for her children to realize her dreams, and James revives one of his best blues, I Need You At Home, that he recorded first when Lucky was a child prodigy. 



While It’s So Good may not have much of a lyric, it has a strong funk groove. Went Too Far, Stayed Too Long is an almost stereotypical, slow blues with fiery guitar (and Peterson fervently singing about how his woman blew their relationship). The album closes with some cautionary down-home, back-porch, philosophy from Peterson and George Jackson, Playin’ the Game, as he details his brother sitting in jail, and a girl raising a baby instead of being in school before stating “life could be better if you only play by the rules.” 



Producers Tommy Couch, Jr., and Paul Lee (who also contributes the solid drumming on the date) have put together what clearly is James Peterson’s strongest album. It’s about time people had a chance to hear just how good a singer James Peterson is, and maybe he’ll be known other than as Lucky’s dad. 



I likely received a review copy from the record company. This review appeared in the May-June 1995 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 202). Here is a short video of James Peterson performing.

 

Ernie Johnson In The Mood

Ernie Johnson's In the Mood, on Waldoxy, is the latest release from the sister label to Malaco and was quite a pleasant surprise. Johnson is a veteran soul-blues singer who most recently had an album on Jewel that really did not leave much of an impression on this writer. Producers Paul ‘Heavy’ Lee and Tommy Couch Jr. took Johnson down to Muscle Shoals where with a crack rhythm section anchored by drummer Lee, and the solid keyboards of Clayton Ivey along with Big Mike Griffin’s guitar, produced a superb collection of blues and southern soul that echoes Bobby Bland, Otis Redding and other masters. 

Johnson’s opening I’m in the Mood For the Blues is a striking song, quite suggestive of some of Bobby Bland’s better Malaco recordings, and the similarities between Johnson and Bland is perhaps most evident here in the phrasing of his slightly raspy voice. Don’t Waste My Time, another Johnson original, is a slow blues with some piercing guitar from Griffin while Ivey’s down-in-the-alley Hammond B-3 helps form the bottom with the Muscle Shoals Horns crisply punching out the arrangements. 

There is a strong Johnson ballad, I Love You, where Johnson's slightly quivering vocal is suggestive of how Otis Redding might have sounded if he had recorded with the Hi Rhythm Section. Like this entire album, the studio band here is first-rate, and the backing vocals effectively employed. Similar flavor can be found in the Jackson-Barranco composition, Hold On. But, these are only the highest peaks on what is a consistently soulful disc that may be the best of many fine releases on Waldoxy/Malaco to be issued this year.

The above review was originally published in the October 1995 DC Blues Calendar, the newsletter of the DC Blues Society, which I edited at the time and the November 1995 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 206). I received my review copy from Malaco/Waldoxy. Here is a clip of Ernie Johnson performing.