Search - James Luther Dickinson :: Free Beer Tomorrow

Free Beer Tomorrow
James Luther Dickinson
Free Beer Tomorrow
Genres: Blues, Pop, R&B, Rock
 
  •  Track Listings (10) - Disc #1

It's taken Memphis legend James Luther Dickinson 30 years to follow his solo debut, Dixie Fried, with this CD, which he describes as "the sound of a drunken circus band staggering down the road." Perhaps that's how long it...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: James Luther Dickinson
Title: Free Beer Tomorrow
Members Wishing: 2
Total Copies: 0
Label: Tone Cool
Release Date: 10/29/2002
Genres: Blues, Pop, R&B, Rock
Style: Soul
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 699675114824

Synopsis

Amazon.com
It's taken Memphis legend James Luther Dickinson 30 years to follow his solo debut, Dixie Fried, with this CD, which he describes as "the sound of a drunken circus band staggering down the road." Perhaps that's how long it took Dickinson to perfect the art of making his music collapse and weave in all the right places. Or maybe he was just absorbed in producing brilliant albums for other musicians--Ry Cooder, Big Star, the Replacements--and playing soul-fired piano for everyone from Petula Clark to the Stones and Dylan. Despite the shambling undercurrent of this disc, it's a wise and subtle-but-raw blend of roots styles, from soul ballads to folk songs to string-band blues, all colored by Dickinson's beef-jerky vocal cords, silken saloon piano, and brilliant orchestrations. Try as he might to sound like a friendly tough guy with numbers like the swinging, hilarious dis "A**hole" and the jug-band tune "Bound to Lose," where he howls about bad-luck riverboat gamblers like a bull mastiff, Dickinson's a softie. His aching cover of Charles Brown's "It's Rainin'" and the lovely honky-tonker "If I Could Only Fly" sound plucked straight from his heart. --Ted Drozdowski
 

CD Reviews

As Wild as the Unrelenting Winds of Time
M. Gaines | Alabama, United States | 01/19/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)

""James Luther Dickinson is a mysterious and enigmatic musical figure who, while remaining in relative obscurity, has managed to be part of a lot of essential creation, from Aretha Franklin sessions to Sleepy John Estes, to Ry Cooder, Alex Chilton and beyond. His legendary (and until now, long out of print) 1972 epic Dixie Fried might be among the most appropriately titled albums in rock history: it's a sometimes scary, often emotional, and always funky amalgam of Memphis soul, country , blues and rock, poetry and personal catharsis." -Dusted Reviews-James Luther Dickinson.........Producer/Artist/Engineer who's history reads like a who's who in the music business has finally delivered on an album he's been threating to make for the past 20 years.
Combining Blues,Jazz,R&B,country,rockabilly and the kitchen sink, Dickinson picks up the pieces from "Dixie Fried", reasembling them, transcending them, and walking away with one of the most influential contemporary pieces of musical mayhem I've heard in a long while.
His rendition of the Eddie Hinton tune "Well of Love" is pure and simple class and style.
Oh....and for you Rolling Stones fans, Dickinson's keyboard playing featured promently on "Sticky Finger", He's the one sitting on the couch next to Keith Richards in the "Gimmie Shelter" documentary listening to a playback of "Wildhorses".
Yes indeed folks JLD gives new meaning to the definition "Legendary" setting the standards far above the clouds and restacking the deck for anyone who cares to take a peek at what's inside. Next stop........"Dixie Fried"........All aboard!"
Free Beer Today
R. J MOSS | Alice Springs, Australia | 05/31/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)

"Scratch your head? Where was the accompanying fanfare, the ranting and hullabaloo this neglected masterpiece deserves? With a beat arising from the bowels of the Mississippi, there's not an imperfect moment on it; a southern sensibility broad-brushed with gumbo lashings and loving detail in the sauce. I can't think of an equivalent musical expression that is so generously inclusive, MacRebennack, Chennier, his sons' outfit, whatever. The gravelly rush of the rockier tunes, their throaty notes invoking the bullfrog alluded to in the 'liners' by Dickinson; a marvellous imaginary duel between Billy the Kid and Oscar Wilde which challenges the concise wit of the Irishman himself, and the tenderest of love songs - Dickinson has a Rabelaisian appetite and expression, tuning the works of southern cohorts to his own indubitable fork. Exhuberance is what I feel with this marvellous CD. Nick Tosches, whose southern roots music writing has carved a reputable niche over recent decades, defers to Dickinson most eloquent notes in the 'liners'. But Tosches is right in speaking about 'this toure de force of a danse macabre (that) comes truly from beyond good and evil'. But I'd assign this to the album entire, rather than single out Hickey's,'Ballad of Billy & Oscar". My thanks again to Dylan's,'Chronicles' for unleashing this barking dog. The free beer's on Dickinson today!"