Chicago Country Blues - Good People Get The Blues is a great album, and it's one that you want to listen to again and again. It's a pleasure to listen to an album with such different styles, like traditional country music and Chicago Blues, and to hear it sounding so cohesive throughout. Essentially, the album begins with country music, blends electric blues into country, and transitions into contemporary Chicago Blues. This combination of styles is called Chicago Country Blues.
The album opens with This Love Is Like A Ball And Chain, a very traditional, waltz-time country song. The arrangement has a powerful simplicity, drawing on both electric guitar chords and finger-picking, although one could also imagine the song with the traditional sound of a mandolin accompaniment. Ball and Chain tells the story of a suitor who is kept at arm's length by the woman he loves, and the song compares this experience to being a prisoner, "picked up, handcuffed, and locked up again, this love is like a ball and chain . . ." What a neat song, and what a unique simile for a song about unrequited love. After an up-tempo chorus, a quieter verse elaborates on the singer's quandary, "you know it's just like doing time here, shackled to your whims and ways - - living on just bread and water, a prisoner in a gilded cage . . ."
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Rain Blues Away is similar to late 1940's or early 1950's country blues, so it's a song that sounds both new and familiar at the same time. The melody is characteristic of classic country blues, with long intervals between the notes. The notes reach up high - - even into the falsetto range - - and then they resolve at a lower pitch. The song opens with a guitar intro in the style of a lap steel, which sounds great in itself, but it's even more fun when you hear the same guitar sound - - the same sustain and reverb - - begin to play other phrases in the song. For instance, after singing a few lines, the singer tosses out a couple of guitar licks that are distinctly like Chicago Blues, and he plays a blues guitar riff to back up his vocal during the song's bridge. The last verse of Rain Blues Away even features the singer and his guitar in a 'call and response' on each phrase, and then the song concludes with guitar playing in the unmistakable style of the lap steel.
The river in Lonely River (You're A Lot Like Me) is an analogy for freedom - - the theme of the restless heart, or the restless spirit, embodied in the lyric, "lonely river, all alone - - drifting miles, from your home - - the path you chose was the path you made . . ." This is a beautiful song that is sung in a heartfelt way. It even has a section of scat singing, more or less, with Perry doing something he does very well - - he takes the appropriate time and space to give the listener time to listen. During the scat verses, he soulfully sings the ooh's and aah's that you might otherwise expect from background singers.
Then in returning to the lyrics, there is a subtle mixed-metaphor used in the final verse, "lonely river, on your own - - if it's just a lonesome road - - you wouldn't have it any other way . . ." The song's lyrics and melody are so pretty that one would have been completely satisfied with this song - - and then it gets even better, as we get a real chance to see why this music is called Chicago Country Blues. The band pauses, the rhythm guitarist plays a walk-up back into the song, and the song begins anew, as a beautiful blues guitar solo just takes-off over the chords. It is such a pleasure to listen to - - here are many of the blues phrases that you have heard before, but played in a new and creative way, as this bluesy solo really expresses the heart and soul of the Lonely River.
As the last note of the solo fades out, there is a pause between songs, and then in a wonderful transition, the slow blues of Heartbreaker kicks right-in, starting with about the same electric guitar notes that Lonely River left off with. Remarkable - - what a novel and catchy way to switch gears and move from the traditional country and country blues of Lonely River to the contemporary Chicago Blues of Heartbreaker. It really gives one a sense of the commonalities between traditional country music, country blues, and Chicago Blues. It's no wonder they call this music Chicago Country Blues.
Heartbreaker is a sultry 12-bar slow blues that prowls like a panther - - and this is partly due to the growling electric bass that is featured on the song. While the bass guitar throughout the album has been an acoustic upright bass - - as it also was on Perry's first two albums - - Heartbreaker is a departure as the bass player has switched to a sound that is just made for this song. In fact, it's hard to imagine it any other way. The opening guitar solo is played with great immediacy, and then it tones down as it leads into the story of the heartbreaker, "heartbreaker said 'come on over' - - she said to me with her angel face . . ." After an intense but fluid second solo, the lyric calls-out the perfidious lover who is just playing with emotions, "heartbreaker, think what you're doing - - you'll put some man in an early grave . . ."
Worried Blues works like a charm in stepping-up the tempo of the album after the prowling intensity of Heartbreaker. Although the arrangement of Worried Blues uses a lot of energetic stops and starts, the musicians stay right together on the beat. And it's fun to hear an 8-bar up-tempo blues describing the travails of too much worrying - - about things that won't be made better by worrying! Like so many of us, the singer says "I worry about the future, all the time - - or I worry about the days gone by . . ." Worrying about the past and the future could certainly keep one too busy to enjoy the present moment. As the song says, "all the worry I do, all the time - - all it got me was a worried mind . . ."
I Took A Chance On You Baby (And You Paid Off In Blues) is a smooth Chicago Blues that rides on a classic blues riff, and it's very nearly a torch song to boot. With a beautiful economy of speech, I Took A Chance On You Baby uses a gambling metaphor to tell its story, "didn't know it was a long shot - - now I know it hurts to lose . . ." Like the song Is It Any Wonder (which follows this song on the album), it gives the singer a chance to showcase his predominantly baritone vocal strengths, and he also characteristically sings a little behind the beat, really leaning into the blue notes.
I Took A Chance On You Baby and Is It Any Wonder also give the band a chance to showcase their effectiveness as a Chicago Blues power trio. This three-piece ensemble is very tight rhythmically, and best of all, the listener won't hear any double-tracking of two or three guitar parts coming from one guitarist. It's refreshing - - and very rocking - - to hear a band play this well as a three-piece without layers of instruments added in the studio. It's also refreshing to hear compositions so strong that they don't need layers of tracks added to them.
Is It Any Wonder (Why I Sing The Blues) is a great torch song from the word go. It opens up with a slinky, pulsating rhythm figure on the electric guitar, backed-up perfectly by the rhythm section - - it would be hard to not keep listening when the band begins playing this riff. And then the singer launches into his tale of a mistreating lover, "the way you keep me waiting, waiting on a whim - - I feel like a light switch, on and off again," with a provocative melody line to match. When the singer poses the question, "is it any wonder why I sing the blues?" the song moves into an instrumental break of hard-hitting, seductive-sounding lead guitar. So why would the singer (or any of us) put up with this treatment from a lover? Why come back to an on-again, off-again relationship? Maybe it's because "when I feel like quitting, like giving up again - - then you walk up to me, you take me by the hand . . ." Just like the classic torch songs, when it's bad, it's bad, but when it's good, it's really good.
The last song on the album is Good People Get The Blues (The Blues Can Pick You Up), and it seems fitting that this funky blues is presented last - - since the album is somewhat chronological in terms of the styles presented. But it seems especially fitting because Good People is so much like an 'anthem' for a blues album. The song begins with the electric guitar and the bass guitar in unison on a searing, sinuous bass line - - and then the drums fall-in with an irresistible syncopated rhythm. Before long the electric guitar changes to funky ninth chords, playing off the rhythms of the bass line and drums, and the singer begins the story - - "crying after midnight, don't know what to do - - baby try and sit tight, 'cause good people get the blues . . ."
What a great sentiment for an album of traditional country, country blues, and Chicago Blues - - as the lyric continues "the blues can pick you up, pick you up off of the ground, up off the bottom, take you to a higher ground . . ."
Blues fans have known this sentiment for a long time, and every time a new listener comes to understand it, you have won a new blues fan - - it's the message that blues music can make you feel good, and even make you feel great. Of course, there are many classic blues written about sad subjects, but because someone else feels your pain and can articulate it - - whether through a lyric, or a vocal performance, or an instrumental performance - - you have the solace of knowing that you are not alone. Someone else knows what you've gone through, or what you're going through. And right about the time that this empathetic message hits home, you're ready for one of the up-beat blues classics - - or who knows? - - maybe even ready for one of the new up-beat blues like Good People Get The Blues.
