Barrelhouse Buck McFarland - Alton Blues

Don’t tell your right hand what your left hand do

Recorded in 1961, this album was arranged by Bob Koester and Charlie O’Brien, just two of the dedicated blues fanatics who roamed the land hunting down ageing blues legends and dragging them in front of microphones to record their legacy before it was too late.

It nearly was too late for McFarland, who passed away just eight months after this was recorded. He was a piano player of the St Louis Bass school, where the slower, thumping left hand bass work is distinctive and unique from other styles. The music is exuberant and loud, necessarily so because it had to compete with the people who filled the raucous taverns of the time. In fact, McFarland took his ‘Barrelhouse’ moniker from the cheap interior design of one such 20s tavern, where a wooden plank was laid over the top of a row of barrels to form the bar. Featuring 17 tracks, including Four O’Clock Blues, Lamp Post Blues and Barrelhouse Buck, the CD also includes a fascinating interview, with no concessions to McFarland’s dialect.

Delmark | DE 788

Reviewed by Paul Rigby
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