The Best of the Stony Plain Years

Long John Baldry (1941-2005) first came to notice in the early 1960s as a member of Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated—England’s first blues band—of which Mick Jagger, Jack Bruce and Charlie Watts were also members. Baldry’s 1964 band, the Hoochie Coochie Men, featured Rod Stewart and a later band, Bluesology, featured Reggie Dwight (aka Elton John) on piano. Baldry first toured the States in 1971 and eventually settled in Canada in 1978. Baldry, who was 6-feet-7-inches tall, thus deserving his nickname, said his main inspiration was Huddie Ledbetter and five of the 11 songs on this disc come from his songbook, the most special of which is his duet with Kathi McDonald on “Black Girl” on which Baldry—primarily a vocalist—plays his 12-string guitar. She also joins him on “Insane Asylum,” an appropriately eerie Willie Dixon song. Baldry popped up on stage in 1995 to join Jimmy Witherspoon and the Duke Robillard Band for a rousing rendition of “Times Gettin’ Tougher Than Tough,” which closes out the disc. Tough times are in store, too, on “Easy Street,” which finds Baldry with “holes in his pockets” and missing Lady Luck, who’s up on Easy Street “rubbing shoulders with the social elite.”