Miss You

The seventh album in just over a decade from one of this country’s most gifted blues practitioners, Miss You finds Don Baker in an introspective mode as he turns fifty. Apart from a handful of tracks, including the up-tempo opener, ‘Chains’ and the straight rock and roll of ‘Mama’, the bulk of the material here is laidback, late night blues fare.

Highlights include ‘Drivin’, a six-minute acoustic workout reminiscent of Tony Joe White’s swampy Louisiana style. The song also has a nice local lyrical reference: “Been driving all night long/With Aslan on my radio/ It sure is a Crazy World”.

Equally enjoyable is the straightforward, no-nonsense acoustic picking on ‘Jackin’ It In’, a tongue-in-cheek ditty done in a J J Cale style. With its references to growing up in poverty, ‘Childhood Blues’ is not only autobiographical but boasts the most adventurous and effective arrangement on the album.

The more mainstream piano-based ballads don’t work quite so well; Baker sounds particularly uncomfortable vocally on the title track, an otherwise poignant string-drenched ballad. ‘Rain On The Wind’ (which faintly recalls Bob Seger’s ‘Against The Wind’) and ‘Louise’ are marginally better songs dealing in similar subject matter. Nevertheless, they seem a waste of Baker’s talent.

Of course, Baker’s reputation as one of the world’s greatest harmonica players remains unchallenged and he demonstrates his blistering technique on a pair of instrumentals here. ‘Funky Duck’ written for Baker by Charlie McCoy is an electric blues stomper in the Junior Wells/ Chicago vein while ‘Waiting for Daylight’, a slow-burning acoustic number with searing bottleneck guitar is a fitting reminder of what he does best.