Bernard Allison Luther's Blues (2-CD)

(Ruf Records) 20 tracks, digisleeve

Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of Ruf Records and more than three decades after the debut of blues guitar master Bernard Allison, Luther's Blues celebrates the musical legacy of Bernard's father Luther Allison - a true legend of Chicago blues and a central figure in the history of the record label. The double LP features 20 outstanding recordings by Bernard Allison, each one a composition by Luther Allison that previously appeared on one of Bernard's many albums. Allison himself selected the tracks for this collection; Pauler Acoustics, a renowned address in the hi-fi scene, has lovingly remastered them.

Anyone who has ever been to a Bernard Allison concert or is familiar with his discography will know how much it means to him to keep his father's musical legacy alive. "At the beginning of my career, I made a promise to myself and my mother, Fannie Mae Allison, that every album of mine would have at least one or two of my father's songs on it," he explains. Bernard has kept his word: Both at concerts and on his records, he still faithfully performs his father's songs to this day. He usually does this in a funky, rock-oriented style that is clearly different from the traditional blues he grew up with. When he was still finding his own musical voice, his father encouraged him to "play it the way you feel it" rather than copying what came before him.

So the 20 Luther Allison songs on Luther's Blues have been upgraded for the 21st century, so to speak, by a representative of the next generation of blues. They are not necessarily Luther's most famous songs. When he works on a new album, Bernard says, he often looks for "songs that were overlooked by my father back then. I then give them my own touch".

The track list on the two CDs spans exactly 30 years, from "Hang On" - recorded in Paris in the summer of 1992, when Allison was only in his mid-twenties - to the two tracks from the last studio album Highs & Lows, which reached number 1 on the Billboard Blues Chart in 2022 and was nominated for Blues Rock Album of the Year at the Blues Music Awards. There are also new versions of familiar Luther Allison songs such as "Bad Love", "Life Is A Bitch" and "Let's Try It Again". Bernard Allison has played a major role in ensuring that these songs, which are now considered classics, have remained in our collective consciousness. This also applies in particular to "Serious", an exceptional track that first appeared on a Luther Allison record in 1987. His son plays it at every concert without exception and considers it to be his father's most popular song worldwide.

The 20-track Luther's Blues is not the first album dedicated to Luther Allison, who died in 1997. Nor is it the first album to bear this simple two-word title. What makes this collection exceptional, however, is that it comes from Luther's own descendant - Bernard Allison, a thoroughbred musician who soaked up the blues tradition as a youth in Chicago, later followed his father to Europe, became bandleader of the Luther Allison Band and eventually went his own way, creating exciting new sounds for a new generation. All the while, he never lost sight of where he came from.