![]() ![]() ![]() The emergence of the Johnson song canon into his repertoire, done with almost Baroque detail, was also something of a revelation. The magic and heart were in his fingertips as well as in his voice, which sounds stupendous here. Mild-mannered and extremely intellectual, he let loose the reserve of emotion when doing a Delta blues number. Shines was a steady, dependable, religious, and forthright chap who lived in Tuscaloosa, AL, and held down a steady job as a construction foreman. The message was that he had been a young sidekick to Robert Johnson and had absorbed everything, although no deal had been made with the Devil. It was as if he reinvented himself in the following decade, playing pristine and flawless acoustic slide guitar pieces complete with shuffling, stuttering, and stimulatingly complicated tempos. Johnny Shines had begun recording in the mid-'60s, the albums done with electric guitar and full-combo backup, one of them reportedly cut after he hadn't picked up an instrument in years. ![]() This is one of several albums this artist made in the early '70s that stand as a masterpiece of the acoustic country blues genre. ![]()
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