Southside Reunion

SSC3053 2007-02-20

Track List

You're The One (Alternative version) - 3:18
When Buddy Comes To Town - 6:31
How Long Blues - 2:38
Good Time Charlie - 3:09
You Called Me At Last - 7:37
You're The One - 3:25
No - 5:36
Help Me Some - 4:13
Rolling and Tumbling - 6:04
Jamming At The Castle - 3:22

Musicians

Memphis Slim - piano, vocals
Buddy Guy - guitar, vocals
Junior Wells: - harmonica
Philip Guy - guitar
Ernest Johnson - acoustic bass
Roosevelt Shaw - drums
A.C. Reed - tenor saxophone
Jimmy Conley - alto saxophone, tenor saxophone

What you hear is Memphis Slim but what you get is pure Chicago Blues - the Sound of the South, Fifties’ style. Slim hasn’t done anything quite like this since and may never again, but I’m glad he took us back to the good old days just this once.
To close the first day of sessions, we recorded You’re The One with Slim singing the lead vocal, as it appeared on the original album release, then with Buddy doing the same on
a separate take. The latter was not included on the LP in 1971 and appears for the first time in
the present CD, on track 10.
For the last vocal number by Memphis Slim, Rolling and Tumbling, the shadow of his old friend from the Windy City, Muddy Waters, filled the studio.After all Muddy had also been a mentor and a guide for Buddy, who was an alumni of his touring band and had recorded several times with him on Chess Records.Here you have three classic bluesmen singing and playing a blues standard by another blues icon from Chicago: a true Southside Reunion.
The final blowout is a fast instrumental boogie, Jamming at the Castle, with Junior Wells playing right against Slim’s piano stride, while Buddy sneaks in and out of the mêlée. But even the best of friends must part, and after this short Chicago blues jamboree, Parisian style, our three heroes and their fellow musicians had to go their separate ways “Down That Big Road”, as Memphis Slim sang it so many times...