ARCHIE LEE HOOKER: Living In A Memory (BLUES): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Some legacies are heavier to carry than others. That's probably why Archie Lee Hooker started his blues career very late. "Living In A Memory" is only the second solo album of the septuagenarian. Even if he has always been more or less immersed in music, especially in gospel when he was young, it is only at the age of 40, when he moved in with his uncle, the great John Lee Hooker, that he became aware that the blues was in his genes and that he would not escape his destiny. Today, Archie assumes perfectly his filiation with the Boogie Man, so much so that he baptized his group, The Coast To Coast Blues Band, of the same name as that of his glorious elder. However, this does not prevent him from following his own musical instinct and from heading north on many occasions throughout the twelve tracks that make up "Living In A Memory".

Indeed, if the very roots 'Parchman Bound', 'Nightmare Blues' and especially 'I Miss You Mama' (which is at the same time a tribute to Robert Johnson and to Archie's own mother) are there to remind us that Archie Lee Hooker is indeed a child of Mississippi, the dominant color of the album pulls more towards the blues of Chicago than towards that of Delta. Archie likes the horns and they give it back to him well, by carrying marvelously his deep voice impregnated with soul ('It's A Jungle Out There', 'Blinded By Love'). For the American, the blues is not only a guitarist's music and many saxophone solos come to punctuate the album, what gives place to real successes as the excellent blues rock 'I Give It With A Smile' and the very rockabilly 'My Baby'.

However, even if "Living In A Memory" is a pleasant album to listen to and makes a lot of eclecticism by sweeping a great variety of blues styles, from the melancholic soul blues ('Sorry Baby') to the boogie ('Getaway'), it remains a retro album. This is what makes its charm but also its limit, because it lacks that famous extra soul that distinguishes the artists really inhabited by their art and the others, those who apply the right recipes but who lack the sacred fire. - Official website

ARCHIE LEE HOOKER

LIVING IN A MEMORY

DIXIEFROG RECORDS

BLUES