Customer Reviews
Nailing it.
Rush nails it, whether it's Bo Diddley, Blind Willie McTell, Buddy Holly, or Eric Von Schmidt. Music sounds fresh as ever. He makes it all his own, singing loose as a goose. The band swings, and his acoustic guitar playing soars. I still love to listen to this.
Electric and eclectic
Like the earlier album, this one is eclectic. After his first acoustic album for Elektra in 1965, Tom Rush followed up with this electric/acoustic album. It's a blend of rhythm and blues tracks--early rock 'n roll--and traditional blues mixed with some original songs by urban folk singers. This causes a mild musical schizophrenia, a bifurcation of focus. There are some Chess tracks: Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry each contributed a song. Bo Diddley originally recorded Dixon's "You Can't Tell a Book by the Cover" and wrote "Who Do You Love. " Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" is less known than his classics. It's a song for adults rather than the adolescent audience of "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Sweet Little Sixteen", and it demonstrates his ability to telescope long narrative phrases within the structure of rock 'n roll songs. Incidentally, Berry still plays this song in concert (last month, anyway). Rush acquits himself well here, playing acoustic guitar with Al Kooper on lead. He works Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love" within the tradition, imitating Bo's larger than life vocal delivery. There's a nice rendition of Buddy Holly's "Love's Made a Fool of You" and an original version of "Money Honey. " In "On the Road Again" the band, featuring Kooper on lead guitar and Harvey Brooks on bass, jells. This is a great traveling song--a trucking song for a rambling man. The Eric Von Schmidt Calypso song "Joshua Gone Barbados" fits its idiom and subject. Folk song has always been a vehicle for protest, and Von Schmidt chose the islands for his subject here. Rush's treatment is effective, but he's even more effective on Blind Willie McTell's "Statesboro Blues" and Von Schmidt's "Turn Your Money Green. " The latter contains obvious borrowings from traditional blues, and Rush's delivery, accompanied by fine guitar work, is very convincing. In these songs as in Rush's arrangement of "Sugar Babe" the guitar and vocals mesh without straining. The acoustic tracks are the best of this album, and the highlight is Rush's rendition of "Galveston Flood," a bottleneck classic. This album is uneven, meaning that not all of the tracks are classic. Nevertheless, the acoustic tracks are well worth the purchase price.
It's about time!
"Take a Little Walk with Me" is probably the best recording Tom Rush ever made. . and that's saying something. On vinyl, the album was divided into an electric side and an acoustic side. The electric side featured, among other great studio musicians- Al Kooper on guitar and on piano the mysterious and never heard from again Roosevelt Gook, aka Bob Dylan. The album got its name from Tom's definitive version of "Who Do You Love. " George Thorogood could only dream of sounding as downright nasty and demonic. . . and then Tom turns his voice angelic sweet on the very next cut, the Buddy Holly classic, "Love's Made a Fool of You. " But the real beauty of this album is the acoustic side. This was where I learned "Statesboro Blues," before there was an Allman Brothers Band. Tom virtually owns Erik Von Schmidt's "Joshua gone Barbados. " It remains one of my all time favorite recordings. Few singers put as much feeling into a song as Tom does on "Galveston Flood. " This essential reissue shows why there was, not only the popularity for folk music and folk singers in the late 60's/early 70's, but the timelessness of the genre and the transcendence of roots music. Tom Rush had the uncanny ability to take other people's songs and make them his own. The Chicago Tribune once wrote that Tom is probably the only man alive who should be allowed to sing Joni Mitchell's songs . . . and a bunch of other people's as well. In fact Tom recorded Joni's music--as well as Jackson Browne's--before they did. A great voice and a helluva guitar player. My vinyl copy of this is well-worn and needs replacing. It's been a very long wait, but well worth it. Buy it! Then go on to "The Circle Game!".
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