Louisiana Red's career was stalled by the '70s, partly because he still hadn't really found his own blues voice, sounding like
Muddy Waters more than anything, but things turned around when he signed with Blue Labor Records. Blue Labor was run by a pair of musicians, jazz arranger Kent Cooper and composer
Heiner Stadler, and they saw in
Red not another
Muddy Waters, but something closer to
Lightnin' Hopkins or
John Lee Hooker, and they helped
Red find his own voice through four albums for the label in the '70s, including this one recorded in 1975, which features
Louisiana Red solo and acoustic, and doing original material (a lot of it co-penned by Cooper). The no-frills recording approach makes this one of
Red's best and most original albums, and combined with the previous album on Blue Labor,
Sweet Blood Call, it formed a sturdy one-two template for
Red's re-launched recording career. ~ Steve Leggett