#482 : Alabama Slim - The Parlor

2020 – Cornelius Chapel

Music Maker Relief Foundation

Release Date: Jan. 29, 2021

By Phillip Smith; Jan. 16, 2021

 

Originally from Vance, Alabama, Milton Frazier aka Alabama Slim was born in 1939 and moved to New Orleans in 1965.  It was there when he started jamming occasionally with his cousin Little Freddie King.  By the 1990’s they had become best of friends, and spoke to each other on a daily basis.  In 2007, with the help of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, they cut an album together called The Mighty Flood.  In 2010 Alabama Slim recorded his first solo album Blue & Lonesome, which was also made with the help of the MMRF.  And now, a little over ten years later he has a brand new fabulous record of fresh downhome blues called The Parlor.  The album was recorded in New Orleans at The Parlor Recording Studio in four hours’ time, and incorporates the talents of Jimbo Mathus (Squirrel Nut Zippers) on piano/organ, and Matt Patton (Drive-By Truckers, Dexateens) on bass and Ardie Dean on drums, with Alabama Slim front and center on guitar and vocals.  As an added bonus, Little Freddie King even steps into the studio with guitar in hand to record a track. 

From the first few measures of “Hot Foot”, I knew this was going to be an extraordinary record.  Slim’s guitar picking is a blues-lovers delight.  Next up, Slim brings his cousin Freddie in for the hard-driving “Freddie’s Voodoo Boogie”.  It’s absolutely wonderful.  Slim slows it down and sings about a woman who steals his heart in “Rob Me Without a Gun”.  Story-telling songs like this one really grab me, especially when sung with the conviction Slim incorporates into his performance.  Mathus and Slim form a most interesting partnership of guitar and piano in the slow blues of “All Night Long”, a first-person account of a man in search of his two-timing gal.  A soulful Stax-like groove runs through “Forty Jive”, a political satire number which goes right for the jugular.  His cover of Sleepy John Estes’ “Someday Baby” is played with finesse and puts a smile on my blues-loving face.

The Parlor is certainly a recording to be embraced.  It captures Alabama Slim in a non-filtered environment, allowing the music to be heard the way it was meant to be.  Records like this just aren’t made this way anymore.          

         

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For more information about the artist, visit this website : Alabama Slim - Music Maker Relief Foundation