Son Seals

Seals continued to gain critical acclaim on his second record, released in 1976 on Alligator Records. His forceful, chopping guitar style and muscle-bound vocals remained the same, but with Midnight Son he incorporated a horn section. This brought an element of soul to his brand of highly electric blues, filling out the sound and making even the slow ones jump.

It's easy enough to dismiss the blues as something tucked safely away in the past. That has
been the critical attitude for the last few years, an attitude which stems from an
apprehension of the blues as a vehicle for romance, a catchall symbol for the kind of pain
and suffering and life experience which a young white audience in the Sixties imagined it
would never gain. As that audience grew up, it understandably moved on to oth... More >

Were it not for the brash reentry of the Winterized Muddy Waters, I could wax superlative; as it is, let's call it the finest Chicago blues record recorded in Chicago (get it?) since the second Hound Dog Taylor (also on this label). Seals performs the thrillingly paradoxical trick of keeping a raw guitar style under impeccable control and sings much better than his serviceable voice would seem to permit. In other words, he really knows what he's doing, and knowing doesn't stop him from doing it to it--it helps. So vibrantly conceived that I'm not even sure I should complain about the horns. (Grade - A-)