Takes One to Know One (1998)
10 tracks, 31 minutes
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Blues music has come a long way since the days of field hollers and the itinerant singer-guitarist. The style represents a starting point in the histories of some of the world’s most popular music today, via its evolutions and influences into jazz, gospel, R’n’B, soul, rock’n’roll, rock, hip-hop and onwards and onwards. And there’s also the hundreds of fusions that have cropped up with various staying-power, from blues rock, punk blues, electronica remixes and the almost-ever-interesting combinations of blues and West African music.
The music that Elmo Williams and Hezekiah Early make feels like it by-passed all that. It feels more like the result of someone zapping an electric guitar, a drum kit, a harmonica and a truckful of distortion back to 1920s Mississippi and telling the masters to make as loud a music as possible.
It’s raw, it’s rough and it’s noisy. The spirit of punk is there, and there’s some musical similarities too, but we all know that’s because the spirit of blues is in punk. Elmo (guitar/vox) and Hezekiah (drums/harp/vox) were both in their 60s by the time this record was recorded, but they sound like 17-year-olds bouncing around being angry and ecstatic and loving it. They're obviously having a blast, and their amplifiers sound like it too. It’s amazing that the record is just the two of them, but I think any more would be a health hazard. This is the original blues of the 1990s. Be careful – it’s not for the fainthearted.
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