Search - Piney Brown, Eddie Mack :: Hoot & Holler Saturday Night

Delmark's head man, Bob Koester, continues his exploration of the vaults of the Harlem-based Apollo label with sides starring two little-remembered entertainers from the late 1940s and early '50s. Both Piney Brown and Eddie Mack belonged to the Big Joe Turner school of take-no-prisoners belting; neither comes close to conjuring their mentor's magnetism, mind you, but their robust declarations on difficult love, lust, and merrymaking in general do provide listeners today with a certain frisson of pleasure. Mack has the better command of voice and emotion, rocking hard or bringing things to a low boil on 14 numbers. On a few of his eight tracks, Brown is stilted in his outlay of feeling. Both singers receive able support from jazz-blues accompanists giving impetus to the then-new music called R&B. Good sax players include Willis Jackson and Bobby Smith. --Frank-John Hadley