Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
You don’t know what you have misplaced until you find it again.
Those Blues keep on coming, those heart-breaking moments of love and unrestraint, the sentiment of passion, the honesty of the damaged, the truth behind the whispering guitar; the Blues keep on coming, and why, because deep down we all understand what it is to lose at love.
Blues, as an art form, was arguably almost crushed by its dwindling importance as the 20th Century came towards its close; the once giant behemoth of the music world, aside from its loyal supports could no longer find the steady heartbeat in a world dominated at times by what can often be described as more alternative modes of expression, but the Blues still it had its heroes, it had those that were ale to bridge the gap between what was, and what was about to come.
Artists such as the indomitable Robert Cray carried the genre to is new golden age, and amongst those heroic Blues machines stands the dramatic and imposing beauty of Larry McCray, and it is only right to consider, indeed endorse, the gentleman of the era as Larry McCray returns after a seven-year absence and produces an album of sheer intellect, style, and ferocity in Blues Without You.
Absence does not always make the heart grow fonder, sometimes it adds clarity to what was there, and yet in Larry McCray those years without the insight and personal brilliance have left a hole in the soul that have not found anyone of such precision and lucid cool to be able to fill what was missing.
Across tracks such as Arkansas, Good Die Young, Roadhouse Blues, the excellent Drinkin’ Liquor And Chasin’ Women, Mr. Easy, Don’t Put Your Dreams To Bed, and Blues Without You (For Paul) the rediscovery of an icon, a man who has known more than his fair share of all that typifies and honours the genre, is palpable, it is electric, and with access to deeply enamouring musicianship such as Joe Bonamassa, Reese Wynans, Josh Smith, Travis Carlton, and Lemar Carter, it is the shiver down the spine that you can’t help but crave.
You don’t know what you have misplaced until you find it again; just make sure that once it resides back in your heart and your hands that you never put it down again. For Larry McCray, an imploring request from many, keep on, keeping on.
Larry McCray’s Blues Without You is out now and available from Keeping The Blues Alive Records.
Ian D. Hall