EDDIE KIRKLAND

DEMOCRAT BLUES

BS-119D

Although his stints with John Lee Hooker and Otis Redding are the most famous,  Eddie Kirkland's entire bio is quite impressive: born in Jamaica, raised in Alabama from the time he was two until he went off with the Sugar Girls Medicine show at twelve. His teens brought him to Indiana, eventually settling in Detroit. There he toured and recorded with John Lee Hooker for seven and a half years. Then Kirkland moved to Georgia, where he was bandleader for Otis Redding.  The continuous road tours had him working with Ruth Brown, Little Richard, Ben King, Little Johnnie Taylor and many more greats. In 1962, Kirkland recorded "It's the Blues Man" for Prestige, and later his hit the "Hawg" recorded by Stax/Volt label earned him national celebrity. His appearance at the 1973 Ann Arbor Jazz & Blues festival was electrifying as he reunited with his Motor City pals Little Mack Collins and the Partymakers. In the 1970s Kirkland recorded two excellent albums for Trix and in the process developed his characteristic unrelenting dance beat and became the Energy Man.  Since those recordings, although he's been touring 40+ weeks per year for the past two decades, Eddie Kirkland's albums haven't represented the strength and variety of his performances. 

 Until, of course, this release:  Democrat Blues captures the Energy Man in the fall of 2002 as he came back through his former hometown, Toledo.  He's frequently made stops in Toledo on his regular trips to Detroit, but this time he stayed a week and spent some time as he revisited Monroe Street where he lived and boxed, and Hines Farm, the rural African-American venue famous for its dirt track as well as a stop for B.B., John Lee and of course, Eddie Kirkland,  on the Chittlin Circuit.  The recordings teamed Eddie with bassist Fuzzy Samuels, folk-blues icon Dave "Snaker" Ray and drummer Andre Wright.  He headlined the blues conference "Screamin' & Cryin' About the Blues."  The first session was a rare acoustic guitar affair; Kirkland played solo and with Ray and produced the haunting "Ten Commandments" and the autobiographical "Good Time Joe," both of which are on Democrat Blues.  The second session for this album brought in fellow Carribean Fuzzy Samuels (known for his work with Steve Stills and his supergroup, as well as Taj Mahal) and jazz drummer Andre Wright, as the guitar players plugged in.  The effects on Kirkland's guitar are legendary to those who've seen him perform and some of them are right out front on the first tune on Democrat Blues, "Walk In The Dark," as Eddie plays an amplified acoustic that's really switched on.  He hits on his old colleague from Detroit, Bobo Jenkins, for the title tune and touches upon Elmore James too before he closed with "the original Rock Me Baby" by Lil Son Jackson, "Rockin' & Rollin'."  Additional songs on Democrat Blues were taken from Kirkland's mesmerizing live performance at the blues conference held the following weekend, with the same band. The resulting disc is  Eddie Kirkland's his finest release since the 1970s.

 The album also contains a bonus disc with the all the songs by Eddie Kirkland released on Blue Suit's Hastings Street Grease: Detroit Blues Is Alive! series - and one unreleased track from those sessions.++

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