It will come as a surprise to casual fans that Steve Miller has a blues side. His hit singles remain staples of classic rock radio and they still sound fantastic. I love "Fly Like An Eagle," "Rockin' Me," and "The Joker." I crack up singing along with "Take The Money And Run." These are staples of FM radio but they don't bear any significant blues influence. I groaned and winced when I learned Bingo!, the first studio album from SMB in more than a decade, was going to be a blues covers collection. Sure, a young Steve Miller jammed with T-Bone Walker, met Les Paul as a child, and hung with a lot of the great bluesmen and musicians. I knew he loved the music and has dabbled with it throughout his career but can the Space Cowboy convincingly pull off these blues? How would he try? Would he try morphing himself and his band into a badass bunch of kids from Chicago or Memphis?
The answer to that last question is no. Steve Miller Band brings the blues to them rather than trying to play it straight on Bingo!. A smile spread across my face within the first 30 seconds of Bingo! as I heard all the elements found in my favorite SMB songs. The decision to adapt these blues songs to his sound and record them his way was clearly the right choice. This isn't blues for purists. It may not even be blues at all. It is a hell of a lot of fun if you're willing to put the CD in the player and crank the volume.
Opening track "Hey Yeah," a Jimmie Vaughan tune, has those smooth, polished, spacey sounds, processed harmonies, and sweet guitar licks so important to the SMB classic sound and it's surprising how good they sound here. "You Got Me Dizzy" is another that bears all those classic elements familiar to '70s FM listeners and like "Hey Yeah," it works. He tells us in the great liner notes accompanying the deluxe edition of this release he knew and often played with Howlin' Wolf but he isn't making any attempt to faithfully recreate Wolf's rendition of "Who's Been Talkin'," even if there is considerably more traditional sound on it than "Hey Yeah."
Article comments
1 - chipster
Maybe I'm to late for this thread, but...God Almighty, how is it that Steve Miller's pre-Joker five (or 6?)albums and stunning work seemed to have been lost, or shoved, into the background. I started to lose interest in his work once those schlock tunes became his hits on the radio. And people, like this writer, think thatis his great work? And then to wonder, gee, can Steve Miller do anything with the blues? Well, yes, he helped develop more the blues-rock variation, but that came from knowing the blues. And a lot of people are surprised to hear that Boz Skaggs was one of the guitarist-singer-writers on the first two albums. It was a real band, with same bass player and drummer for a long time. Miller created a beautiful , broad mix of elements for some really rocking and atmospheric music (after all, it was the mind expanding '60's/'70's!)- better lyric writing, too IMO. Please check out the earlier albums. Sailor is a classic.