Track Listing
1 - Let TheGood Times Roll
2 - Runnin' Blue
3 - Blues Power
4 - Key to the Highway
5 - Blues Deluxe
6 - Hide Away 1962
7 - Killing Floor
8 - Funky Music
9 - Something Inside of Me
10 - Still Alive and Well
11 - Bright Lights, Big City
12 - Checking UpOn My Baby
EB Rating - 4.5
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Rick Derringer follows up his excellent 1996 release,
Tend the Fire
with another blues-rock CD. While
Blues Deluxe doesn't have quite the scope and
variety of Tend the Fire, it is nonetheless an excellent
CD, as Rick takes a couple more steps farther from rock and closer to the blues.
This is not to say that
Blues Deluxe approaches being a traditional blues CD.
Rick has been playing Rock n' Roll and Hard Rock for nearly all of his 30+ year career. During live performances,
Rick displays amazing proficiency playing that style of music. He is certainly one of the most talented guitartists
performing today. But his head-on, full bore guitar attack, fully present on his first two blues
releases for Blues Bureau, is too heavy for all but the most guitar-hungry of blues fans.
But Rick has changed things up a bit with his last couple of releases, including
Blues Deluxe, in which he features covers of 10 blues
classics. There are also two of his own songs, Funky Music, and a slightly toned down
(and excellent) version of Still Alive And Well. Both of these songs are
rockers, and Funky Music in particular is out of character with the rest of the CD.
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