Walter Trout, over a 22-album solo career, has never before recorded a project devoted to cover songs. Then again, few players have impacted the 62-year-old quite like the late Luther Allison.
In many ways, Allison set the blues-rocking template for next-gen players Trout, who played for Canned Heat and then John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in the 1980s before setting out for a solo career.
Though the Freddie King-influenced Allison debuted with Delmark, he had such an approachable, crossover-ready sound that soon he had been signed by Motown’s Berry Gordy. At the same time, though, his roots remained in the classic mid-century Chicago sound. Same with Trout, at work again here with producer Eric Corne, who oversaw 2012’s Blues for the Modern Daze. There is a similar spontaneity, despite the presence of very familiar Allison classics like “Cherry Red Wine.”
Trout and Allison met and played together just once, in 1986 at the Montreux Jazz Festival — a photo from that day graces the cover of Luther’s Blues, due on June 11, 2013 from the Mascot Label Group’s Provogue imprint — but it cemented Trout’s sense of the commitment and innovation that surrounded Allison.
Trout lives up to that towering legacy here, all the way down to the album’s sensitive presentation — which includes a narrative from Trout about that Montreux meeting, rare photographs, and new liner notes by Allison’s son, long-time partner Carolyn “Rocky” Brown and band member James Solberg.
Meanwhile, from the floorboard-rearranging brawn of “I’m Back” to the searing soul of “Just As I Am,” Luther’s Blues is as heartfelt as it is dynamic. Trout then closes out with a lonesome original called “When Luther Played the Blues,” illustrating one last time just how deep his reverence goes.
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