Roy Brown I Feel I Feel That Young Man's Rhythm (LP)Young Man (LP)

(Route 66) 17 tracks

Roy BrownA Remembrance by Art Fein Roy Brown's first two Route 66 albums (Kix-2, Kix-6) were valuable documents of his best years, while the Mr. R&B album (R&B-104) could have been called Stray Cuts if there hadn't already been a rock band with a similar name. This new compilation is wonderful because it reaches back into the obscurity and pulls out excellent recordings that complete a portrait of Roy's early, most important years. Here are his first two re-recordings, made by Bill Quinn under circumstances Roy described as "a bootleg recording in a club. I didn't know anything about it". And a complete, previously unreleased 1949 New Orleans session that includes his first version of Lonesome Lover, here called CRYIN' AND SINGIN' THE BLUES, and a first attempt at the Big Town theme; (The Girls In) BIG TOWN, later perfected in Big Town and Answer To Big Town. Of course, we must study this great man posthumously. But it is satisfying to know that Roy Brown was able to experience some of his new found fame before he died. He toured Europe in the mid-1970s, when there was virtually no interest in him in America. But when the 1980s arrived, there was a new wave of interest in jump blues and in Roy Brown, due in no small part to the re-release of albums from Sweden, of all places.