Luther Allison: Live In Chicago : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Luther Allison understood one of the least-appreciated attributes of the blues: chaos. His guitar playing during the eight-minute "Cherry Red Wine," from the double-disc Live in Chicago, is a runaway train heading for a cliff. Just before going over the edge, Allison pulls up triumphantly. "The blues, thank you," he announces, as though he'd just defined the form. Actually, in these performances from the last years of his life, 1995-'97, he was reclaiming it. A graduate of Chicago's switchblade-tough West Side clubs, Allison came to the blues steeped in the vocabulary of Freddie King, Magic Sam and Otis Rush. As Live in Chicago makes evident, he added a dollop of soul - his pleading "Think With Your Heart" sounds like a lost Stax treasure, and "You're Gonna Make Me Cry" visits the church of Otis Redding. After extensive woodshedding on the European touring circuit in the Seventies and Eighties, Allison was in the midst of a Buddy Guy-like comeback when he was felled by cancer. His legacy? The songs, such as the anti-racist "Will It Ever Change?," had a workmanlike sturdiness. But the unhinged performances - from "All the King's Horses" to Hound Dog Taylor's "Give Me Back My Wig" - left blood on the floor. (RS 826)

GREG KOT