Super Black Blues in Bloomington, MN

Bob Thiele
, the former head of blues at
ABC Records
who founded the
Flying Dutchman
imprint
BluesTime
in the late '60s, designed the 1969 album
Super Black Blues
as a way to showcase the label's three recently signed blues legends,
T-Bone Walker
,
Joe Turner
, and
Otis Spann
. That this LP happened to follow the format of
Blue Horizon
's recent hit
Blues Jam in Chicago
-- a record that featured plenty of Chicago stalwarts, including
Spann
, backed by
Peter Green
's
Fleetwood Mac
-- is not incidental.
was a way to bring these '40s stars to the attention of '60s audiences and perhaps entice a couple of old fans to listen as well. The record was just four tracks, with the long jams "Paris Blues" and "Blues Jam" anchoring the A and B sides and balanced by "Here I Am Broken Hearted" and "Jot's Blues." The emphasis on improvisation and long grooves certainly made
different than the original '40s and '50s sides by
Walker
Turner
-- those were restricted by technology and taste -- and it's fun to hear them stretch out with
George "Harmonica" Smith
Arthur Wright
Ernie Watts
Ron Brown
Paul Humphrey
in tow. If the record isn't necessarily energetic and sometimes flirts with formlessness, chalk that up to the aftermath of psychedelia, where jams were prized over energy. This does mean
is a bit dated and a bit of an anomaly in the catalogs of
, but time has turned this into an amiable detour: not the first record to hear by any of these three by any means, but it's fun to hear the giants find common ground. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine