Consumer Guide Album

Joe Louis Walker: Cold Is the Night [HighTone, 1986]
Producer-penned songs begin and fancy up each side, which is half the Hightone story--this would be one more piece of moderately sharp spit-and-shuffle blues without that spit-and-polish. The other half is label honchos Bruce Bromberg and Dennis Walker's insistence on artists determined to rise above--like Robert Cray, Ted Hawkins, and JLW, who must have started out emulating both Junior Wells and Buddy Guy and taken it from there. B+