Consumer Guide Album

Johnny Shines: Too Wet to Plow [Blue Labor, 1977]
Shines isn't Robert Johnson made flesh and come to walk amongst us--you should hear his Biograph stuff--but here he takes advantage of his forty-year edge to make an album that's easier to listen to--because it sounds better--than King of the Delta Blues Singers. Engineering is only a means to an end--the real secret is a devotion to the form so passionate that Shines's playing and singing are wild and brilliant as they've never been before. Guitarist and change-of-pace vocalist Louisiana Red and harpman Sugar Blue add small touches of plenty. The songwriting fades some on side two. A-