Koko Taylor
Old School
Alligator CD4915
Some man has ticked off Koko. My advice for him is: Get the biggest bunch of roses you can find and hightail it over to Koko’s
right now. NOW! When you get there, drop to your knees BEFORE you ring her doorbell. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll let you live.
Why do I say this? Well, of the 12 songs on the new Koko Taylor release Old School; the five that Taylor wrote are soaked in bile
and vengeance. The other seven aren’t exactly love songs. It’s the perfect CD to listen to if someone has done you wrong.
Old School kicks off with Koko acappella: "Hey ya’ll. Listen to me. I want to tell you a thing or two." And does she ever. Time has
not mellowed this woman. Matter of fact, her voice is more powerful and authoritative than ever.
Taylor’s voice demands ballsy guitar backing it up, handled masterfully on the disc by Steady Rollin Bob Margolin and Criss
Johnson – adding flame and fire, but never, ever getting in Koko’s way. (Her live band The Blues Machine powerfully back her on
only one tune, Willie Dixon’s "Young Fashioned Ways".)
Taylor wrote the liner notes herself. They read like a mini blues history lesson – she tells about coming to Chicago with her husband
in 1951, riding in the back of the bus with 35 cents in her pocket and a box of Ritz Crackers – no money, no idea where they were going
to stay, just happy to be away from the tough life back South. Not that Chicago was a picnic either – Koko worked as a domestic making
about $5 a day.
Saturday nights, they would leave work behind and immerse themselves in the flourishing Chicago blues scene – over to Sylvio’s
or Theresa’s to hear Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter or Shakey Horton. Blues that Koko describes as ‘hard core… down in
the basement, far as you go’. The blues that influenced her. The blues she sings on this CD.
Koko sums up her work on this CD better than anything I could say: "I love singing the real, old school blues. It gives me a feeling to
sing them type of blues. That’s old school. That’s me".
- Blue Lisa -
Southwest Blues CD Review - May 2007
Current Reviews - 2007 Reviews - available at our store
