In 2014, 81-year-old Delta guitar wrangler and blues shouter
Leo Bud Welch released
Sabougla Voices, his debut album. Having spent his adult life playing in church, this collection of raw gospel songs was greeted with excitement on the blues scene.
Welch toured the world playing not only clubs but festival stages. Part of his deal with Fat Possum's Big Legal Mess was that if he got to record his Sunday morning gospel album, he'd deliver them its other side: a set of blues tunes from the heart of a juke joint Saturday night. Produced by label boss Bruce Watson, I Don't Prefer No Blues is wooly, frenetic, jagged, and raucous. That said, one of its finest tracks is the standard "Poor Boy," its outlier musically and lyrically. The lone track produced by
Jimbo Mathus (who plays guitar elsewhere), it commences with
Welch's and Shardé Thomas' mournful, twinned moans followed by her snare, an upright bass, and an acoustic guitar backed by a choir to complete the funereal lament. It's the emotional and spiritual bridge to
Sabougla Voices. From here on out, that bridge gets all but burned. "Girl in the Holler” is a swampy choogler filled with unspoken desire as
Welch and
Mathus lay out the case, moving back and forth in riffs and fills atop a rattling drum kit. On "I Don't Know Her Name,"
Mathus adds distortion and fuzz guitar freakout to the stomping uptempo blues swagger. A Farfisa organ squalls in the backdrop as
Welch literally begins to howl his lust like a dog. Other standards, such as the sludgy "Goin' Down Slow" and the manic strut of "Cadillac Boogie," are delivered with a testifying authority. "Too Much Wine," played with wah-wah guitar, organ, and clattering snares, is dirty and funky; it's the juke joint floor stomper in the set. The theme of "Pray On" takes its form through revved-up rock and blasted blues with the band grooving to stun. The set ends with a razor-sharp reading of
Robert Nighthawk’s classic "Sweet Black Angel." In it, the electric Delta music of
R.L Burnside meets the Chicago sound of early
Muddy Waters, bringing the tradition to the place where it opens up to meet rock & roll. I Don't Prefer No Blues is drenched in lineage and history, but refuses to be bound by it. Simply by playing his own interpretation of the music he's been surrounded with all his life,
Welch has given us a truly great blues album. [I Don't Prefer No Blues was also released on LP.] ~ Thom Jurek