One Night In America

Charlie Musselwhite and Friends

review by James Middlefield

You either love Charlie Musselwhite or you’ve never heard of him. He’s considered a living legend partly because of his musical talents and credentials and partly because even he is surprised to still be living. He’s been through it all and stories abound about his life style choices. But the Charlie Musselwhite exhibited on his web site and the Charlie Musselwhite that we saw at the BB awards and a month earlier at the Experience Music Project is the congenial, homespun, gentleman Charlie Musselwhite. And that is the man that has made another statement through music about being able to look back on the times you’ve had, places you’ve been and circumstances you’ve grown up in.

Charlie Musselwhite is one of those artists whose CDs you collect once you’ve seen him perform. When you’ve felt his acknowledging smile warm you to his music, you’re hooked. With each CD and performance he adds to the story that will become legend.

This CD is about all that. It’s not a blues purists CD, it’s music for people who like to sit on the porch and reminisce about days gone buy, chew a piece of straw, open up all the windows and be glad to be alive on a quiet summer night. In the liner notes Charlie explains every nuance of this CD and why and how he put it together. There’s no sense talking about the instrumentation, it’s all satisfying and includes some of the best players in the business including G.E. Smith, Robben Ford and Marty Stuart on guitar, T-Bone Wolk on bass, Per Hanson and Michael Jerome on drums, Peter Re on organ, with Christine Ohlman and Kelly Willis on vocals.

Of the twelve songs on the CD four are written by Charlie, there’s a song by Johnny Cash, and one by Jimmy Reed. All the songs tell stories of life and getting through it from the perspective of small town America. One of my favorites, written by Charlie, is called “Blues Overtook Me”. It’s an autobiographical story of his life and could easily reflect the lives of many blues people we know of, who have been consumed by music from a very early age, leading them through the stereotypical blues musician life style and the struggle of trying to carve a living out of blues music. Another favorite is “In Your Darkest Hour”, also written by Charlie Musselwhite. It’s a sad lament stripped down to Charlie’s best story telling voice, with only bass underneath and his soulful harp on top.

If music was about great voices and peerless playing none of us would own any blues CDs. Instead we’d have show tunes, orchestra and opera in our collection. But since blues is about a feeling, we can have music collections that include Charlie Musselwhite and many others who have given us songs with feeling, performances with feeling and good reason to own their CDs so we can share the feeling.