Mississippi-born bluesman Big Bad Smitty eerily summons up the spirit of Howlin’ Wolf on Cold Blood (HMG/HighTone 1003; 43:54). A fixture on the St. Louis blues scene for the past two decades, the leather-lunged Smitty is backed by a competent group of local musicians on this collection of blues classics. Longtime Howlin’ Wolf sideman Hubert Sumlin appears, appropriately, on four tunes closely associated with his former employer-“Three Hundred Pounds Of Joy,” “I Asked For Water,” “Forty Four Blues” and “Killing Floor.”
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