[.ca] Slippin' In

The best of Buddy Guy's solo albums since his 1991 reemergence finds him mixing songs from his concert repertoire ("Someone Else Is Steppin' In") with blues chestnuts ("I Smell Trouble") and his own new originals, like the gritty plea for urban spiritual renewal "Cities Need Help." His performance is raw and natural, a nasty throwback to his late-'60s roadhouse days. Guy takes unbridled pleasure in hard playing and vocal shouting that straddles the soul-blues border. The absence of shallow attempts at pop-radio play and the lack of guest appearances by rock stars or emerging bluesmen like Jonny Lang, which plague most of Guy's recent CDs, is refreshing. This is simply Buddy, on his own strong terms. --Ted Drozdowski

Probably Buddy Guy's best latter-day album:
"Slippin' In" from 1994 is somewhat more antiseptic than Buddy Guy's classic Chess sides, and the clean production has sanded away all the grit, which won't be to everybody's liking. But it is a good album nonetheless. Guy stays away from stereotypical funk and modern day blues-rock shredding and actually plays the blues, and his guitar playing in particular is excellent almost all the way through. "Slippin' In" features former Stevie Ray Vaughan-cohorts Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon on several tracks, and none other than the great Johnnie Johnson is playing the piano. His playing on "7-11" completely takes over the track. Buddy Guy performs an excellent "Don't Tell Me About The Blues", a nice "Shame, Shame, Shame", and the slow blues "Little Dab-A-Doo" is excellent, partly due to the presence of Johnnie Johnson. Guy's take on Lowell Fulson's "Love Her With A Feeling", and the slow, soulful rendition of "Trouble Blues" are very good, too, but the otherwise decent "Someone Else Is Steppin' In" suffers from annoying backing vocals, synthetic sounding organ, and too much seperation of the instruments (multi-tracking isn't always such a great thing). "Man Of Many Words" is a very obvious rip-off (it's Otis Redding's "Hard To Handle"), and a couple of other tracks have been recorded many times before as well (albeit with different lyrics). But even klichés like "Please Don't Drive Me Away" and "I Smell Trouble" are well executed and played with a passion, and the combined forces of Buddy Guy's axe and Johnnie Johnson's tinkling 88s make "Slippin' In" a really enjoyable album which can easily be recommended.

• I Smell Trouble
• Please Don't Drive Me Away
• 7-11
• Shame, Shame, Shame
• Love Her With a Feeling
• Little-Dab-A-Doo
• Someone Else Is Steppin' in (Slippin' Out, Slippin' In)
• Trouble Blues
• Man of Many Words
• Don't Tell Me About the Blues
• Cities Need Help