Consumer Guide Album

Joe Louis Walker: The Gift [HighTone, 1988]
No house-band barrocker, no funkified keep-up-with-the-times hopeful, never show up on a Tina Turner album. Like they say, he just plays the blues. Yet between sharp tempos and wordly-wise material, he overcomes the boredom factor built into that time-worn endeavor. Even when he lays back his beat has a forward tilt, and he's not proud about where he gets his songs--from producers or band members or fellow guildsmen. The sole throwaway is more than offset by the title tune, a bluesman's "Change Is Gonna Come"--25 years later, for better and worse. It's not really a blues at all. The bluesman in question wrote it with no help from anybody except his father and his grandmother and the Lord above. A-