Junior Kimbrough
All Night Long
Album · Blues · 1992
Produced by the late, great music critic Robert Palmer, who featured Kimbrough prominently in his documentary film Deep Blues, this live session is a clear-sounding, loose, and crazily energetic heaping of electric blues. Recorded in a rural wooden church in 1992, this is remarkably Kimbrough's debut album. He'd made singles since the late '60s, but until Palmer rediscovered him, his nuanced, detuned and heavily rhythmic guitar style (which lies somewhere between Fred McDowell and John Lee Hooker) was wholly obscure. Palmer thankfully preserves the "wrong" notes and amp buzz, making this the closest one can get to the juke joint itself. Backing band the Soul Blues Boys—electric bassist Garry Burnside and drummer Kenny Malone—hold Kimbrough up perfectly while he lurches atop a deep blues beat.