This is the content that I really want to see on this site! Reviews of vinyl records, with music that no one had posted on the Internet before! This is the kind of website I personally will visit, oh yes. Someone will probably say: But it’s been laid out for a long time. Comrades, to my deepest regret, you are wrong. For ten years now, I’ve been trying to get my hands on the demo tape of the Gothic band Lacuna Coil with the song Frozen Feeling from the very beginning of their career. And for five years I’ve been hunting for a rap album from wrestling star Ron Kills (aka R-Truth). And here and there, individual tracks from a wide variety of artists that are not online pop up. And I’m only talking about high-quality studio recordings. In terms of live performances, for example, there is such a nuance: most of them are not recorded at all.
Nevertheless, I fervently believe that every performance of every song in this world, right down to your soul chants, comrade, is part of the boundless cultural heritage of mankind. And in our digital age, we must strive to ensure that as much of this heritage as possible is available to each of us for free at the wave of our hand. Okay, let your soulful covers and absolutely garage recordings remain in their place, but if someone really tried and recorded a record/cassette/ disc/ wax roller, then it certainly should be digitized and distributed. Yes, there is too much music as it is. Yes, no one really needs it. But the main question for me sounds like this: What if someone still wants to listen to that particular track from all the variety of music and won’t be able to?
So it was a pleasure to digitize Little Willie Littlefield’s album Houseparty. You’ve never heard of him, and you want to know who this Littlefield is?
Well, let me point out that Willy is considered the very musician who “formed the key link between boogie-woogie and rock and roll.” He became a real sensation when his debut single It’s Midnight was released in ’49. It was after this record, which Littlefield recorded at the age of 18, that everyone else started playing piano trioli en masse. Of course, like many other artists, Willy did not stay long at the zenith of his fame, and already in ’57 his fame faded, and his releases ceased to be commercially successful. Nevertheless, he was always a welcome guest in various clubs, and therefore recorded records and performed periodically almost until his death in 2013.
Little Willie Littlefield – It’s Midnight (No Place To Go)
In 1982, Willie Littlefield was already far from the height of his fame and moved to the Netherlands, where he began recording on the Oldie Blues label of another local legend, Martin van Alderen. It would be completely unfair not to mention at least the fact that it was Martin who, from the 69th year until his death in 2002, organized countless blues festivals and concerts, and also became the first non-musician to be inducted into the Dutch Blues Hall of Fame. After his death, the Oldie Blues label existed for only two years, but at that time it had already managed to give us a lot of records, one of which was Houseparty.
The songs from this album can be divided into three parts. If you look at the back of the vinyl cover, you can see that each track is marked with the letter a, b or c. So the c-tracks are pure piano, and there are an overwhelming majority of them: nine out of fourteen. Still, Willie was still from that era, which was not sex, drugs & rock’n’roll, but more boxing, booze, rhythm’n’ blues. If you are in doubt whether you should listen to such an album, then you can carefully try the track Chief Boogie Woogie or Swanee River Boogie – a little less than two minutes, they, in principle, completely capture both Littlefield’s entire talent and all his accumulated skills over the years, and, in general, it is a similar sound in about this the rhythm will have a large part of the record.
Are you still with us? Wow! The c-tracks also include a short cover of San Antonio Rose, as well as full-length compositions by Honky Tonk Train Blues and Willie Rolls The Boogie. Willie didn’t exactly treat the piano like you-he was almost one with it. These tracks are so fast and energetic, so full of melody, that sometimes it’s hard to believe that all these sounds are really made by one instrument, and only one person is playing behind it.
And for some reason, at the end of each side of the record is one of the already mentioned extremely incendiary tracks, and the penultimate ones are the much slower After Hours and Raining. That is, they have a slow rhythm that sets the notes lower. A beat, so to speak, over which Littlefield plays high notes very quickly. However, they still sound less fervent, and it seems like these songs are the right place to close the playlist, but probably Willy wanted to create the feeling of an encore. At least that’s what it seemed to me as a result, and damn, it’s pretty cool.
The last two c-tracks are Just Relax and Walking Through The Streets. Just Relax stands out because all the notes in it are played quite slowly, and, fully consistent with its name, this composition is the most relaxing on the entire album. Walking Though The Streets can also be noted due to the fact that it is neither fast nor slow. The composition is in the middle rhythm, which are much more numerous under the letters a and B.
Actually, the b-tracks, of which there are only two, are the tracks where Willy not only plays, but also sings. The vocalist from Littlefield is nowhere near as phenomenal as the pianist, so you definitely won’t hear anything particularly outstanding here, but Willie’s voice is still pleasant, and you can’t take away his musical ear. It is with the b-track Beggin’ that the entire album opens – pure blues under the piano, unhurried and soft. It’s a very unusual start for a very energetic record, but, nevertheless, extremely pleasant and, indeed, really captures the listener. Captured me, at least. But the second b-track captured me even more, because it was because of it that I learned about the Houseparty album. It’s a cover of Roy Brown’s famous song Good Rockin’ Tonight, and that’s the song I couldn’t find online in the first place. And I was completely satisfied. Willie Littlefield is definitely not the musician who risked remaining in my memory as the man who ruined Good Rockin’ Tonight. It’s a great rhythm and blues song, but perhaps if you listen to the songs in the order I indicate them in this article, it’s hard to figure out where it is – the very “key link between boogie woogie and rock and roll.”
It lies in the a-tracks. In addition to the piano, drums and bass are also played in these songs (just the bass, as indicated on the record; it seems to me that the bass guitar is, after all, not the double bass). And it is in these compositions that one can fully understand what Littlefield became famous for. Each of these three A-tracks is already more than rhythm and blues, but still less than rock and roll. And each of them is unique. For example, Houseparty is the most dense in sound, mainly due to the fact that there is another vocalist besides Little Willie.: His wife is Tonny.The pleasant and appropriate addition of female vocals, so rare in classic rock and roll, really lifted the whole album in my eyes… ears… it doesn’t matter. The second a-track is Holland Boogie Wiggle. Littlefield sings alone there, and much more attention is paid to the musical rhythm, and the vocals rather just pleasantly complement the overall picture… it complements it very pleasantly. Well, the last track on this album is actually the first one on side two, and that’s Farmsound Boogie. There are no vocals on it, but… It’s a bomb.
The second side of the album opens with the famous four menacing notes from… Beethoven’s fifth Symphony, followed by the most incendiary track of the entire album, on which you can even hear my much-loved rock and roll bass line. Yes, perhaps Farmsound Boogie is already a real rock’n’roll. And yes, the track is called Farmsound Boogie only because it was recorded at Farmsound Studios. I don’t know, personally, I wondered for a long time why it was called that, until finally I thoroughly studied the back of the cover and drew parallels…
Little Willie Littlefield – Farmsound Boogie
Summing up the results. Despite the fact that I bought an album by one of the forever forgotten legends mainly in order to add another version of the track Good Rockin’ Tonight to my collection and share it with the people, I was extremely pleased with the purchase. On Houseparty, you can listen to more than just fourteen tracks by Willie Littlefield – you can hear all the metamorphosis that music has undergone from blues to rock and roll. This is definitely not a legendary record, but a very interesting, pleasant and solid work performed by a master who saw with his own eyes all the changes in the music scene and played it all with his own hands for decades. Isn’t it worth listening to at least a few times?
2. Houseparty
3. Honky Tonk Train Blues
4. Just Relax
5. Chief Boogie Woogie
6. Raining
7. Swanee River Boogie
8. Farmsound Boogie
9. San Antonio Rose
10. Holland Boogie Wiggle
11. Walking Through The Streets
12. Good Rockin’ Tonight
13. After Hours
14. Willie Rolls The Boogie
Download Little Willie Littlefield – Houseparty (1982) (rar, mp3, 83 Mb)
Ross, I see you’re a fan of the Good Rockin’ Tonight song. It runs like a red thread through your articles.
Well, it’s almost a jazz standard, from the first notes to the end. How can you not love her?