Memphis Slim & Canned Heat
Memphis Heat

A difficult city to live in, Chicago of the last century, if you are black and penniless. This is the story of Peter Chatman, born in 1915, a native of Memphis, profession: pianist for a lifetime. As a young man, with torn pants and worn-out shoes, he traveled across the new continent, hopping on and off train cars; he lived on makeshift means, earning his rightful stool every time he could, on which to perch before moving his fingers across the piano.

At the age of thirty, he was "Memphis Slim, the Barrelhouse Pianist." Traveling the world, playing his music, living free: the allure of a subculture destined, over time, to become the majority, at least for a brief span: before that, God knows what they called people like him; then the young people of that kind became, started calling themselves and were called among themselves, "beatniks," dharma bums, flower children, hippies, but at the end of the day, white or black, country blues or rock, they were always the same American kids, generation after generation.

Chicago entered the slim man's life: it was the city richest in events and opportunities, if you were black and knew how to play the blues. From that day on, Peter Chatman stopped wandering, aware that, on the big stages or in the dust and vomit of the city's seediest clubs, there would always be a place for his slender behind and a piano for his bony fingers.

The life of Memphis Slim is the story of a man and an entire metropolis, the chronicle of a heart that beats with vehemence. The story of Memphis Slim, as the record's inlay itself states, is a story of survival through blues, the odyssey of a man alone with his piano amidst a sea of depravity. A turbulent sea in which survival was a daily achievement.

The Canned Heat not only rediscovered, with this album from '74, Memphis Slim's repertoire, the songs, and compositions, but they went far beyond, recording the tracks with him, leaving him the leadership, and the microphone on all occasions but one. They immersed themselves in the Chicago sound up to their necks and wallowed in a black sea of timeless and prestigious notes and sounds.

Upon listening, there is no doubt: this is Chicago sound, and there is nothing of flower power. The Canned Heat limit themselves to fortifying parts that might have been a bit weak, but not much less juicy. Incidentally, the Bear is only on the harmonica, present in very few tracks, Sunflower Vestine is part of the team but shares the task with James Shane: the aforementioned new acquisition plays alongside Joel Scott Hill, the other "substitute" for the late Blind Owl.

Ten pieces signed by Memphis Slim and a cover, "Five Long Years," the only one that the pianist yields to Scott Hill's voice: one might think this is the least Canned Heat album of their entire discography. So what was the band for?

The piano solo in "Back To Mother Earth" becomes piano and guitar; "Black Cat Across My Trail" is accelerated; the old-style instrumental "Mr. Longfingers" is strengthened by the robust rhythm section. Rockish execution of the cover and "When I Was Young"; the guitars shine in the concluding "Wizzle Wham." Thirty percent of the album, in general, was the Heat’s contribution. Apart from the rhythm and blues of "Down The Big Road," where the brass section takes the lead, everything else, everything, is Memphis Slim, his shrill voice, so characteristic and so different from the usual big, super-subtle voice of color.

The band deliberately stays in the background, refraining from overshadowing, preferring to act as a quiet file, to round out the sound of an excellent artist to rediscover; the "Memphis Heat" in the end is just this: the Heat's goal is to put that "Heat" next to the protagonist's nickname, not to replace it, nor to find something so new that it requires a new baptism.

Unlike the album with John Lee Hooker, with Memphis Slim the Canned Heat do not seem to want to contrive a blow-by-blow response to the verve of the artist-guru of the moment, serving as original accompaniments, while at the same time claiming their own identity (the album was called "Hooker and the Heat"); with the slim man from Memphis, and thanks to him, the Heat seem to dive into a sea that is not theirs, where their beards and their patched shirts have nothing to do with pinstriped suits, a world called Chicago, where they seem determined to integrate at all costs, and therefore bow their heads and work hard, without protagonism. Certainly, they did not elaborate on the forms of blues by Cream or the Rolling Stones, but they remained ever more faithful to tradition, but never immersed themselves to such depths. The result of the immersion was the best possible: a precious artifact returned to the light, and the album is more than appreciable. In Chicago as well as outside.

To be dusted off like its creators.