A CD reissue of a 1981 double LP,
Big Blues is a sprawling piece of modernized electric jump blues that honestly never quite catches fire despite the best efforts of
Jimmy Witherspoon and his guest star, tenor saxophonist
Hal "Cornbread" Singer. Both
Witherspoon and
Singer play and sing with soulful grit and a relaxed ease, but the band backing them never quite comes together. One issue is that there's no bass player on the album, just keyboardist Mike Carr working a set of bass pedals with his feet à la
Ray Manzarek of
the Doors; this leaves drummer Harold Smith out in the cold, unable to work up the kind of in-the-pocket groove this kind of slow-cooking blues needs to get over. The overextended song lengths are no help either; one-third of these 12 songs break the seven-minute barrier, with "Whiskey Drinkin' Woman" and "Lotus Blossom" weighing in at a staggering eight and a half minutes each. Although both
Witherspoon and
Singer get in a few good solos, the length is simply not justified by the mostly lackadaisical performances. ~ Stewart Mason