Is it possible to find a record more houserockin' than this one? Straight-up barnstormin' blues, that's what this is. Lowell Fulson's hootenanny holler and chicken stratch guitar-pickin' put lesser R&B up-and-comers to shame in 1966 with the electrified stomp of the title track (covered later by artists as diverse as Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, ZZ Top, and Salt 'n' Pepa). In fact, "Tramp" puts 99% of R&B to shame; this classic is blues at its most loose and jerky, and the rest of the album follows in the same vein. Fulson's country blues past behind him, he hunkers down and churns out a sweaty Southern soul groove through swaggering cuts like "Get Your Game Up Tight" and "Back Door Key". Fulson's voice is majestic; warm and booming like Howlin' Wolf's kid brother, and his guitar-pickin' is purely sublime, never falling into the more predictable patterns sometimes trawled by other "cosmopolitan" blues twangers of the same era. "Two Way Wishing" cuts like a knife, sounding for all the world like what The Rolling Stones aspired to but could never quite reach, while "Year of 29" is so hot that it's likely to leave your speakers smellin' like burnin' rubber. (Note: Fulson is billed as "Lowell Fulsom" on this record sleeve, which is a name he sometimes recorded under for reasons unbeknownst to me. Generally people now refer to him as "Fulson".)
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