Track Listing

1. That's All I Need
2. I Need You So Bad
3. I Feel So Good (I Wanna Boogie)
4. All Of Your Love
5. I Don't Want No Woman
6. Sweet Home Chicago
7. I Found A New Love
8. Every Night And Every Day
9. Lookin' Good
10. My Love Will Never Die
11. Mama Mama
12. I Don't Want No Woman

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7444 in Music
• Released on: 2008-10-31
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

CD Description
Although singer/guitarist Magic Sam learned from the Chicago blues greats, his 1967 debut album, WEST SIDE SOUL, prettymuch marks the dividing line between the classic Chicago style and what we know as contemporary electric blues today. His serpentine, tremolo-laden guitar style, somewhat akin to what his Cobra labelmate Otis Rush was doing around the sametime, represented a new step in blues guitar and proved highly influential. The album is also remarkable for promulgating the merger between blues and soul that was still a new idea at the time.

Customer Reviews

Soul meets the blues and explodes
Sometimes things just do live up to the hype, I'd heard about this recording in hushed tones from 'serious' guitar players and singers for years and I never believed a word of it. Well it's all true this is a masterpiece par excellence.
Although people tend to put Sam in the Hendrix camp he is a lot less distortion & flash and more feel and harmony his singing is somewhere between Otis Redding and Sam Cooke maybe a little reedier but a beautiful thing all the same.
Every track is a classic and you've heard them all a thousand times played by every bar band you've ever seen but you've never heard them like this, go on do your ears a favour.

Feelin' good with the 'Magic' touch.
The title gives a clue - West Side Soul. In this ground breaking album, Magic Sam uses his soulful vocals to excellent effect, backed by the west side Chicago sound epitimised by contempories such as Otish Rush and Buddy Guy. This approach was a step up from the more traditional Chicago sound of Muddy Waters etc. Magic Sam was poised for greater things, having just joined Stax Records when he sadly died of a heart attack. Luckily this album stands as a testiment to his greatly missed genius.

Soulful blues. (Or bluesy soul....)
This album is Magic Sam Maghett's finest hour, and one of the finest electric blues albums of the 60s.

He plays blues with a strong soul influence, particularly on the magnificent "That's All I Need" and "I Don't Want No Woman". Classic slow blues ("All Of Your Love", "I Found A New Love"). And superb versions of Jimmy McCracklin's "Every Night And Every Day", Robert Johnson's "Sweet Home Chicago" and J.B. Lenoir's "Mama Talk To Your Daughter".

Okay, so not everything is equally memorable, and the arrangements and Sam Maghett's (albeit excellent) guitar playing may feel a bit unvaried towards the end, but "West Side Soul" is still a great, electrifying blues record, and it belongs in any serious blues collection.