Originally from San Francisco, Joe Louis Walker, a Blues Hall of Fame inductee, and four-time Blues Music Award-winner, celebrates a career that exceeds a half century. The album features guest performances by fellow blues icons Keb’ Mo’, Eric Gales, and Albert Lee, plus Detroit soul singer Mitch Ryder, harmonica virtuoso Lee Oskar, Hot Tuna’s Jorma Kaukonen, UK Subs’ Charlie Harper, legendary session player Waddy Wachtel, plus more. The standout song for me is “7 and 7 is” which closes the album, where Arlen Roth and Charlie Harper share the vocals, but it takes quite a bit of work to get there. It feels like a very disjointed album, so we get gospel, soul, Sixties and some acoustic, all with blues tinges and flourishes but the use of so many different singers and styles actually becomes distracting.

I listen to a lot of blues for my own enjoyment, to take me away from the styles of music I am often asked to review, but there are many times when playing this that I feel I am being smothered, and the harmony vocals on “Seven More Steps” make me think of make me think of early Kiss each time I play it. It is solid, and I am sure there will be many people seeking this out as it is another album from a legend, with many more legends involved with it, but this doesn’t have the raw emotion I want from this style of music, no anguish or pain. It has all been smoothed over and settled down.

Rating: 6/10

Links:
https://www.joelouiswalker.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ClepatraBlues/