Few artists in the history of recorded music have made alcoholism seem quite as appealing as
Amos Milburn
did on his run of hits for
Aladdin Records
in the '40s and '50s.
Milburn
was one of the biggest rhythm & blues stars of the pre-
rock
era, and his celebrations of wild, booze-fueled nights --
"Let Me Go Home, Whiskey,"
"Bad, Bad Whiskey,"
"Juice, Juice,"
"Vicious, Vicious Vodka,"
and
"One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer"
among them -- were potent enough to give even the most zealous reader of The Big Blue Book second thoughts about turning down a cocktail. It helped that
was a top-shelf boogie pianist with a sly, witty vocal style, and he was fortunate enough to get just the right help in the recording studio.
Let's Have a Party (The Aladdin Recordings)
collects 29 numbers
recorded between 1950 and 1957, which means a few of his biggest early hits don't make the cut (the frantic version of
"Chicken Shack Boogie"
which appears here is a recut recorded in New Orleans in 1956, with
Lee Allen
Red Tyler
on sax), but what's here is uniformly fine, and even the silly closing number,
"We Teenagers Know What We Want"
(recorded when
was pushing 30), cooks with gas. While roadhouse jump blues was
's specialty, that's not all this set has to offer;
delivers a great version of
Lionel Hampton
's
"Flying Home,"
shows his gift for slow blues on
"Tears, Tears, Tears,"
and even leaves the bottle alone for a while on the midtempo groove
"Milk and Water."
Among single-disc collections of
's work,
The Best of Amos Milburn: Down the Road Apiece
has the edge since it includes his material from the '40s, and
Mosaic
's exhaustive
The Complete Aladdin Recordings of Amos Milburn
is heartily recommended to the wealthy and obsessed, but
Let's Have a Party
is still an excellent collection of
in his prime, and it'll have you and your friends cracking open your liquor cabinet in no time flat. ~ Mark Deming