Lil’ Ed and The Blues Imperials
Full Tilt
Alligator Records
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also available on amazon
14 songs and just under an hour of Lil’ Ed and his cohorts, and he takes full advantage of all the songs and time to display some of his strongest singing to date as well as his most in your face smoking slide guitar. It is apparent that this band has been together for a full 20 years; guitarist Mike Garrett, bassist James “Pookie” Young (half brother to Lil’ Ed), and drummer Kelly Littleton comprise the Blues Imperials that play behind Ed Williams. They constitute one of those high-energy acts that somehow manages to transpose a lot of their live act power to the discs they make, and they are a full tilt, dead ahead blues band. Whether it is the full speed ahead guitar boogie to the slowest low down dirty blues you can imagine, there is an authentic, joyous, feel to their playing. There is no hold back for next time, it is all left out on the band stand or in the studio. This is the raucous blues that can trace its lineage to some of the royalty of the Chicago
Blues scene, Lil’ Ed’s uncle and musical teacher and guide is J.B. Hutto. You can call the form of blues as played by this band, feral, untamed, undomesticated, or maybe uncultivated, but what ever you call it, it is going to make you rise up and move until the sweat runs rampant. His blues is the ferocious, lupine, savage sound that rise up from within that knows no master but is only controlled when allowed to raise its head unfettered from time to time. One of the best discs in the blues field that reminds us of its beginnings and its roots, blues as it should be played not the tame drivel that sometimes passes.