- Music
- 07 Apr 01
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.
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.
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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.