Size: 138,8 MB
Time: 58:43
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2016
Styles: Chicago Blues
Art: Front
01. Jake's Cha Cha (2:07)
02. Beer Drinking Woman (3:54)
03. Times Is Gettin' Harder (3:40)
04. Twist It Baby (4:14)
05. Confessin' The Blues (4:29)
06. Little Woman You're So Sweet (2:52)
07. Lonely Traveler (3:10)
08. Peaches (3:39)
09. Just A Feeling (3:59)
10. Love Is A Hurting Game (3:06)
11. Maxwell Street (4:52)
12. Worried Life Blues (3:40)
13. Ain't That Loving You Baby (3:19)
14. I Was Wrong (5:40)
15. Down In Kansas (5:56)
Features an all-star backing group of Wild Child Butler, Sam Lay, Bob Stroger and Jimmy D. Lane!
Recorded January 27, 28 and 29, 2000
Jimmie Lee Robinson was the consummate Chicago bluesman. In fact, he was more Chicago than most of his more famous peers. Unlike the vast majority of Chicago blues greats who were from the South (overwhelmingly from Mississippi) and were part of the Great Migration north to make their musical mark, Jimmie Lee was born in the Windy City, just blocks from the bustling Maxwell Street Market which would help shape not only his own musical style but the entire genre of postwar Chicago blues as well.
Jimmie Lee first started playing on his beloved Maxwell Street in 1942 before he was even in his teens, learning on an acoustic guitar from a neighbor named Blind Percy with whom he would accompany in both church and street performances. Soon he switched to an electric model (perhaps among the first of the musicians in Chicago to do so), a gift from a legless harmonica player in a wheelchair named Louis whom he’d often accompany on Maxwell.
Throughout the 1940s when the emerging electrified blues sound was just starting to take shape along the market’s streets and alley ways, Jimmie Lee cut his teeth and performed with a who’s who of future blues heavyweights who had just arrived in the city and discovered Maxwell Street for themselves, like Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Eddie Taylor and David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, to name just a few. It was there that Jimmie Lee became part of a nucleus of key musicians who would help create a highly influential musical style which quickly spilled out from Maxwell Street and into Chicago’s taverns and bars. Through record sales and radio broadcasts this new sound soon spread throughout the rest of the country and eventually around the world. Jimmie Lee not only witnessed this transformation first hand, he was intrinsically involved in it.
By the early 1950s he formed the Every Hour Blues Boys band with up-and-coming singer-guitarist Freddy King and childhood friend Frank “Little Sonny” Scott, eventually breaking into local clubs around the South Side. A naturally gifted musician, he developed a reputation as a highly-skilled and reliable sideman and started performing regularly with some of the finest blues musicians in Chicago at the time, including Elmore James, Little Walter, Magic Sam, Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed and Sunnyland Slim. Soon he was also called upon as a session musician on guitar and bass, recording behind artists like Eddy Clearwater, Shakey Jake, Mighty Joe Young, Little Walter, Eddie Taylor and St. Louis Jimmy Oden.
In October 1958 Jimmie Lee got his first opportunity to record as a leader for the small Bandera label and cut Lonely Travelin’, a song that would become a signature tune and whose imagery would provide the blueprint for a new persona decades later. He went on to make two other sessions for Bandera which produced several other notable songs from this period, including All My Life and Times Is Getting Hard.
With the mid-1960s came the increased exposure of the blues to the European market and in 1965 Jimmie Lee was part of German promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau’s very influential and long-running overseas package the American Folk Blues Festival, where he toured alongside fellow Chicago-based artists Big Walter Horton, Buddy Guy, Shakey Jake and J.B. Lenoir, as well as Mississippi Fred McDowell, Roosevelt Sykes, Dr. Ross and John Lee Hooker. He continued to perform throughout the 1970s but increasingly took jobs outside of music to support his family, working as a security guard, cabbie and carpenter. By the end of the decade he was all but retired from the music scene.
Then in 1994, more than a decade and a half since his last appearance in a recording studio, Jimmie Lee embarked on a much-anticipated comeback with the release of Lonely Traveler on Chicago’s flagship blues and jazz label Delmark Records. Although his Delmark debut was firmly in the vein of classic Chicago blues, his music evolved along on a more unique path in the subsequent years. Complete with cowboy hat, boots and spurs, and leather vest, the tall and lanky bluesman re-invented himself for a second act which harkened back to his very first Bandera recording. Gone was the strictly traditional Chicago blues sound he grew up with in favor of a more intimate and often socially-conscious brand of acoustic blues. There was also a strong emphasis on songwriting, with the intent on producing new, thought-provoking material instead of just rehashing the old classics.
Several critically acclaimed releases followed including two on his own Amina label as well as Remember Me and All My Life for APO. Although he was now enjoying one of the high points of his long career as an artist, the Maxwell Street Market area which served as the very foundation of both his life and music was in serious danger of being completely demolished due to plans for the expansion of the campus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Jimmie Lee quickly became both the public face and leading voice of the fight to save the historic street, with his poignant Maxwell Street Teardown Blues serving as its rallying cry.
After spending much of his recent years performing primarily in a solo acoustic setting, in late January 2000 Jimmie Lee returned to his electrified Chicago blues roots for one last recording session at APO. Unlike much of his recent recordings which used only one or two subtle supporting instruments, this remarkable session featured the full backing of an all-star band of Chicago blues stalwarts: Wild Child Butler on harmonica, Sam Lay on drums, Bob Stroger on bass, and Jimmy D. Lane, the son of the late great Jimmy Rogers, on second guitar.
The results are a highly spirited and very satisfying mix of unadulterated Chicago blues the way it used to be played. Jimmie Lee revisits some of his best material from days long gone by and also pulls out a few of his gems from more recent times. He also pays tribute to some of his past friends and musical associates like Little Walter, Jimmy Reed and Shakey Jake on such classics as Confessin’ the Blues, Ain’t that Lovin’ You Baby and Jake’s Cha Cha.
Looking back, Jimmie Lee’s return to his roots at this point in his life seems both poetic and prophetic. It was as if, like the old song goes, he knew his time ain’t long. The following year tragically brought about the final destruction of what remained of Maxwell Street and the heartbreaking news that the exceptionally-fit, clean-living veteran blues-man had developed terminal bone cancer.
And shortly afterwards, Jimmie Lee was gone. On July 6, 2002, he was found slumped over behind the wheel of his parked car not far from the South Side neighborhood where he grew up, having taken his own life.
On this, his final recording session, Chicago bluesman Jimmie Lee Robinson gave us one last glimpse of his artistry. And these masterful recordings will now serve as another reminder of just how special of an artist he really was—right to the very end. – Gene Tomko, Living Blues Magazine
Down In Kansas