Lurrie Bell Can’t Shake This Feeling
Lurrie Bell
Can’t Shake This Feeling
Delmark Records
Lurrie Bell was born in Chicago in 1958. As a youngster he was surrounded by Blues music as his father was the renowned harmonica player Carey Bell. The younger Bell first picked up the guitar at the age of six and polished his playing skills with Big Walter Horton and Eddie Taylor. Around 1975 Bell joined Koko Taylor’s Blues Machine and he toured with her for four years. Although he appeared on one of his father’s albums and on an Alligator compilation he didn’t release his own first recording until 1989’s “Everybody Wants to Win” on JSP Records. This is Bell’s twelfth album under his own name.
Bell has twenty Blues Music Award Nominations. In 2012 he won two BMA’s as part of “The Chicago Blues A Living History: The (R)evolution Continues”. Then in 2014 he won the Blues Music Award for Song of The Year “Blues in My Soul”. The following year he won the 2015 BMA for Traditional Blues Male Artist of The Year.
The band on this new recording includes Bell, guitar and vocals; Roosevelt “Mad Hatter” Purifoy, piano, organ and Rhodes; Matthew Skoller, harmonica; Melvin Smith, bass; and Willie “The Touch” Hayes, drums. The album is produced by music journalist and historian Dick Shurman who co-produced the 1986 Grammy Award winning album Showdown! featuring Albert Collins, Robert Cray and Johnny Copeland.
“Blues is Trying to Keep Up With Me” is the first of five originals by Bell. We get to hear Purifoy hammering on the ivories before Bell even gets to take his first solo. “This Worrisome Feeling in My Heart” contains the lyric “I think about my past and it fills me with misery”; Bell’s vocal and guitar are intense on both this and on the title track “I Can’t Shake This Feeling”. “Born With the Blues” was co-written with Buster Benton. “Faith and Music” was co-written with producer Shurman. These are all deeply moving.
“I Get So Weary” is a slow blues from T-Bone Walker with a fabulous guitar intro from Bell that precedes another of his spine tingling vocals. Skoller plays inspired harp throughout the recording but especially on “Sit Down Baby” and “Hidden Charms” both from Willie Dixon.
Also covered are “Drifting” from Eddie Boyd; “One Eyed Woman” from Maxwell Street Jimmy Davis; Lowell Fulson’s “Sinners Prayer” with another great performance from Bell; Little Milton’s “Hold Me Tight” and his dad Carey Bell’s, “Do You Hear”.
This is the same band that was used on Bell’s 2013 “Blues in My Soul” album. Throughout the recording the band is nothing short of stellar. This is one of the best lowdown recordings you’ll hear this year.
Richard Ludmerer
