The boy was Billy Boy Arnold, a pure Chicagoan born in the Windy city in 1935. Four years later, in 1952 at only seventeen, he recorded his first 78-rpm single, "Hello Stranger"/"I Ain't Got No Money", for the obscure Cool label with the Bob Carter's Orchestra. Meantime, Arnold was playing on street-corners with a guitarist friend named Ellas McDaniel.
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| BBA & Bo Diddley on stage many years later |
But Arnold, who had a gift for songwriting and was also a very talented singer, wanted to have his own records under his own name. So, after misunderstanding that Leonard Chess didn't like his way of playing harmonica, he went to Vee-Jay Records and cut his first singles under the name Billy Boy. Two of his titles, "I Wish You Would" (May 1955) and "I Ain't Got You" (October 1955), made a strong impression on young British blues musicians when the Yardbirds covered them, so that other British blues bands like the Animals or David Bowie covered his Vee-Jay songs.
Fortunately, on the other side of the Atlantic, some young British rock musicians, like John Mayall's Bluesbreakers or the Yardbirds, had re-discovered blues and Arnold could get onboard several multi-artists European blues tours.
On one of these European tours, in 1977, he recorded a dozen tracks in a North London studio. The album was only released twenty years later, with two additional Chicago tracks cut in 1976.
The twelve "British" tracks are fueled with the high energy brought by the English rock musicians who backed him : Groundhogs' Tony McPhee on guitar, bassist Alan Fish and Rory Gallagher's band drummer Wilgur Campbell. The songs, recorded "live" in the studio with the four musicians playing together without any overdubs, reflect the relaxed atmosphere in the recording room with some missed starts and Arnold talking to the band. The result is a muscular and aggressive blues album considered by many as one of the best Arnold ever recorded.
Even slower titles like "1-2-99" (with an eerie guitar sound and echo effect on the vocal), and the non-Arnold song (Jimmy McCracklin's "Just Got to Know", Little Walter's "Ah'w Baby" and "Blue And Lonesome") have a typical British blues inventive side.
The raw sound relates more to Delta blues than to the more polished Chicago style. The difference is obvious when hearing the final two "Chicago" numbers , much less energetic, much less exciting.
A really great album. Wonder why it stayed hidden for twenty years !
In 2001, Arnold was well established as a prominent blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. When the opportunity of recording with a producer such as Duke Robillard came up, he couldn't refuse.
Neatly produced, with excellent musician like Robillard himself on guitar, Matt McCabe on piano or "Sax" Gordon Beadle on saxophone, this albums doesn't concentrate totally on Arnold's original material or his famed harmonica style (he even sings three songs without blowing a single harp note), but on the appealing singer.
Half the tracks are Arnold's songs still : the excellent mid-tempo boogie "Bad Luck Blues", the hot jumping "Let's Work It Out", the Delta style "Greenville", a revisit of his first ever recorded song "Hello Stranger" from 1952, the rightly titled "Boogie & Shuffle", and the rather classic "Come Here Baby".
If some people weren't convinced that Arnold is really a great blues singer, here is enough to convert them.
Ice on the cake, the "bonus" 15-minute interview with Arnold which closes the album will also convert the listeners that Arnold is also a cool guy. But most of all it is a gripping evocation of Arnold's early years : his meeting and few lessons with his hero Williamson, his debut with the future Bo Diddley…
An exercise that he apparently appreciated because lately he wrote his memoir with Kim Field. The book, titled "The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold", was published in November 2021 by the University of Chicago Press. ■
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| BBA, the book & Kim Field |
● "Love Me Baby" (recording session with Billy Flynn and Mel Brown : guitar. Bob Stroger : bass. Willie "Big Eyes" Smith : drums) : https://youtu.be/BmqHIjTenHw
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| John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson |
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