Artist: Yardbirds
Label: Repertoire Records
Released: 1966
It hadn’t been long at all since the legendary Yardbirds formed when their longtime manager Giorgio Gomelsky out of the blue came up with the idea of teaming up with blues icon Sonny Boy Williamson. During the so-called blues revival, plenty of legends were swapping the kindness of the Chicago wind, as if on a bet, for the meteorological gloom of the British Isles, where music-adventure-hungry “ravers” always welcomed them with open arms. Back then the blues giants were basically treated like royalty over on the Island. The ever-suspicious Sonny Boy Williamson staked his claim to a seat in that prestigious club of imported dignitaries too. In the autumn of his life, fleeing the stepmotherly embrace of America, he increasingly took shelter in the awakening music scene of the old continent, which might soon have even become the musician’s second home.
But let’s take it nice and slow. All that glitters is not gold. Sonny Boy Williamson & The Yardirds is just one in a long line of dimwitted music-industry experiments that, even before the hard-won victories of the sixties British R&B revolution arrived, tried to cash in on a murky crossing of island blues with incomparably sharper traditional flavors. The set of nine Williamson cuts, delivered with the typical roughness and arrogance of the great Sonny, suffers mostly because of its own incompatibility with the modern, ear-friendly pop strumming that Eric Clapton later juicily branded a swotty attempt to tame the basic elements of the blues. Lots of musical variations of dubious quality, in other words. A similarly fishy origin wafts from the fairly obscure and unattractive material, which on top of that, next to the understandably spotlighted blues legend, never lets the rest of the Yardbirds birdies peek out from behind the curtain of pale, droning backing music. This is first and foremost the “great” Sonny Boy Williamson show, full of his trademark harmonica innovations built on the sharpness of traditional bluesy frameworks, but with only a meager dose of other spices that, by some incredible fluke, would at least barely justify this album’s existence.
As for Clapton himself, his playing rocks along indifferently at a thoroughly average level the whole way through. It’s quite likely true, too, that you won’t hear Eric this “green” anywhere else. A unique chance, then, to catch the rising guitar star in some endearingly clumsy stumbling, to which Williamson’s dominant instrumental-vocal delivery presumably contributes its own selfless share. Although there’s a good chance young Eric was one of the few who, despite increasingly intense flirting with this kind of blues purism, saw the unambitiousness of the “project” right from the start, you can feel the guitarist’s discomfort here at every step. The same goes for the rest of the Yardbirds foursome, who in no way live up to their reputation as the so-called first guitar supergroup. A shame, because without the psychedelic experimenting, the trademark swagger of extended guitar solos and the other obligatory “rave up” orgasms, this album barely scrapes its way to the unenviable status of a good half hour of wearying harmonica blowing.
Lineup
Eric Clapton: guitar
Chris Dreja: guitar
Paul Samwell – Smith: bass
Jim McCarty: drums
Sonny Boy Williamson: vocals, harmonica
Production
Giorgio Gomelsky
Track list
1.Bye Bye Bird
2.Mister Downchild
3.Hours Too Long
4.Out Of The Water Coast
5.Baby Don’t Worry
6.Pontiac Blues
7.Take It Easy Baby
8.I Don’t Care No More
9.Do The Weston
Running time: 36.10
