Dwelling in Muddy Waters basement, sharing living space with pianist Otis Spann is bound to help a man with a sense of the real deep blues. Paul Oscher was the first full-time white member of Muddy Waters band-he held the harp chair off and on from 1967-72. The band was on the road a lot, playing overseas concerts as well as Universities in the US, with the occasional bar gig thrown in. All the time Oscher was absorbing Muddy's delta slide guitar style and picking up on Spann's work on the ivories as well.
After leaving Muddy, he spent time playing with various outfits aound NYC, known as Brooklyn Slim. In the mid-90's he came back on the wider scene with a couple of new CD's, and for the past few years has been working festivals and club dates as a solo performer, working with guitar and harp in a neck rack. He also performs on piano, concertina and melodica, all played with a deep-blues feeling.
His latest release focuses on his solo work, four of the fourteen tracks feature a small combo(including drums) backup; a couple with old pal Dave Maxwell on piano, one with Levon Helms on drums. The tunes range from blues classics like "Drifting Blues"and "Sugar Mama" to standards like Duke Ellington's "Things Aint What They Used To Be" and "Georgia" with an instrumental and four originals added to the mix.
At times, Oscher sounds like a one-man Chicago blues band-his harp in a rack is somehow solidly amplified and even with his hands busy on the guitar he manages to get that full and powerful electric harp sound-several numbers call to mind Muddy's early Chess sides with Little Walter. "St Louis Blues" brings memories of Walter Horton, who frequently called this tune. Spann's influence is obvious on the piano based "Blues & Trouble". Robert Johnson's "32-20" gets a heavily reverbed sound treatment that makes you think of dusty 45's in a funky side-street record shop. Leroy Carr's "Blues Before Sunrise" features Oscher's Melodica playing (a literal mouth organ, with a small piano keyboard).
The original "Deborah's Baby", has an almost CW feel to it, with a strummed guitar chording away-but CW the way a bluesman would play it-with lines like "I just don't understand.how could you have my baby and love some other man?" there's a emotional abyss underneath the almost jaunty melody. Ellington's tune gets an instrumental treatment that's both lyrical and in the down-home mode. "You're Still My Baby" was a Chuck Willis blues-ballad, done with some funky guitar. There's even a spiritual, "What A Friend We Have In Jesus" played instrumentally with solo guitar and foot.
There isn't any show-off pyrotechnics or special effects flash here-just good solid and good-feeling blues.Oscher looks like he's where he belongs in the cover shot, sitting on a porch cabin at Hobson's Plantation (home of the Shack-Up Inn), way down in the delta. That's the home of the music heard here and Oscher is at home in it.
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