The real question is "why?" In his fourth decade making recordings, rock & roll singer/songwriter
Elliott Murphy has been a standard by which many other songwriters could be judged. His records form the 1970s and '80s are watermarks of how it's done -- even when nobody's paying attention. All the luminaries who have cited him as an influence would fill this review. He's been living in Paris since 1990 and perhaps there's something in the water that got to him, because this record of blues covers with
Olivier Durand and his band is incomprehensible. The essence is this:
Murphy has no voice for the blues, his arrangements of blues standards like "Terraplane Blues," "I Got My Mojo Working," "Mannish Boy," "The Thrill Is Gone," and "Slip on In," among others, are tepid at best. This group sounds like a lounge band trying the material for the first time. There are some originals here that fare a bit better, such as the slippery "Hey Gunslinger" and "Artificial Paradise" that have more real blues in them than the cover of
Jimmy Reed's "Baby What Do You Want Me to Do" -- or any of the other covers for that matter. No matter how much
Murphy revers the blues, this is an ill-conceived and terribly executed project. The disc also comes with a "bonus" DVD entitled "A Tribute to Willie Dixon" and contains five performances of his tunes including "Spoonful" and "Back Door Man." The bottom line is both the CD and the DVD are dreadful and will send those who have stuck by
Murphy through the decades back to his older records for comfort and reassurance.