Someday / Hurtin’ Inside / Tell Me Who / Blue Boy / Come Back Baby / Sapphire / Fast Train / Strange Love / Shame, Shame, Shame / Everyday, Everynight / Love My Baby / I Wanna Do More / Wildcat Tamer / Well Baby / I Miss You So / Rebound (Playing time: 45:31)

We all have a mental short list of fave artists whose albums we religiously buy on release without testing the waters first, purely and simply because we know it’s highly unlikely we’re going to be disappointed with our auto pilot purchases.

One of the guys who features high on my personal list is Mike Sanchez. ‘Blue Boy’, his third solo offering, is a veritable 24-caret gem, offering the listener a forty odd minute breeze along the highways and byways of r&b, rock n roll, country and rockabilly. The choice of material, as well as the choice of musicians enlisted to play it, is exemplary and wherever you drop the laser on to this CD’s shiny surface it simply oozes class.

The album explodes into life with ‘Someday’, a solid rocker that sets the mood for the rest of the set. Brook Benton’s ‘Hurtin’ Inside’ treads a similar path, the band laying down an archetypal New Orleans beat behind Mike’s soulful vocal. Continuing the Crescent City theme, ‘Tell Me Who’ is nothing short of a masterpiece. Crank up the hi-fi, close your eyes and prepare to be transported back in time to Cosimo Matassa’a J&M Studio on North Rampart and Dumaine; Mark Morgan’s muscular drumming and Al Nicholl’s tenor evoking memories of Earl Palmer and Herb Hardesty respectively.

Similarly, the Jack Hammer-penned wild rocker ‘Sapphire’ attempts to recreate the electric atmosphere of a fifties Little Richard session for Art Rupe’s Specialty Records – Mike pounding and orating in fine style whilst guitar guv’nor Andy Silvester adds fuel to the fire with some shimmering Ike Turner-infected guitar fills.

Biggest surprise for a lot of people will be the inclusion of the title track, an old Jim Reeves number which works to perfection. Andy Silvester weaves his guitar magic with some atmospheric pedal steel that fits snugly around Mike’s tear-stained vocal. ‘Fast Train’, the only self-penned track, is a rockabilly number that ploughs a similar furrow to Elvis’ ‘Mystery Train’. It’s then a case of taking a fast train to Louisiana to revisit Slim Harpo’s ‘Strange Love’ before catching a flyer over to New Orleans, the birth place of Smiley Lewis’ classic ‘Shame, Shame, Shame’ – Mike’s version sticking pretty close to Smiley’s original arrangement.

Chicago blues takes a bow, courtesy of Little Walter’s ‘Come Back Baby’ and Billy Boy Arnold’s ‘Everyday, Everynight’, both featuring appropriately respectful harp licks by Ricky Cool. Mike adopts a swaggering anti-fem dom stance to great effect on ‘Wildcat Tamer’, a number no doubt familiar to a good deal of NDT readers via the original by Tarheel Slim.

Leiber & Stoller’s ‘I Wanna Do More’, a fifties vehicle for songstress Ruth Brown, features Mike and the boys in a more laid-back groove that’s replicated to a certain degree on ‘I Miss You So’ and ‘Well Baby’ – both memorable for some glorious blues licks from Andy that strongly suggest he’s an admirer of US blues guitar hero, Jimmie Vaughan. To round the whole shooting match off there’s a robust version of Charlie Rich’s ‘Rebound’. This wasn’t actually included on the track listing of the copy I obtained – so beware you don’t pass it by!

Superb album. Superb musicianship. Superb material. Sheer heaven.

What more can I say?

-- Pete O’Gorman