Track Listing

1. Boot Hill
2. Sky Is Crying
3. Empty Arms
4. Little Wing
5. Wham
6. May I Have A Talk With You
7. Close To You
8. Chitlins Con Carne
9. So Excited
10. Life By The Drop

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6017 in Music
• Released on: 2000-04-17
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

The Best
This is the best studio album Stevie never recorded and possibly the best studio album of his altogether. An album I think put together by his brother Jimmy after his death. A selection without a single weakness.
The CD covers every aspect of Stevies style from the rawness of the excellent opener Boot Hill to the jazz/blues of Chitlins Con Carne.
The version of Little Wing is worth the price alone. Sublime and exquisite, Stevie at his best.
The closing song Life by the Drop is, I suppose an obvious choice to put on, bearing in mind his recent recovery from addiction and then cruel death shortly afterwards. But listen to its subtlety, simplicity and aching vocals. Even after listening to it dozens and dozens of time it never fails to send shivers down my back and the closing lines a lump to my throat...

4½ stars. As good as a "real" album
This collection of outtakes from Stevie Ray Vaughan's previous album sessions, released the year after his tragic death, is actually as solid and enjoyable as most of his "real" albums.

It is bluesier than "In Step", recalling his first album, "Texas Flood", and it features an alternative take on the delightful, swinging "Empty Arms" (from "Soul To Soul") and nine previously unreleased songs, including fine renditions of Howlin' Wolf's menacing "May I Have A Talk With You" and Elmore James' immortal "The Sky Is Crying".

Stevie Ray Vaughan's too rarely heard slide playing smoulders on the morbid "Boot Hill" (an alternative version of Elmore James' "Look On Yonder Wall"), which is also highlighted by Reese Wynans' wonderful piano playing.
And Vaughan's guitar playing on this album includes some of the best performances of his career - just listen to that purely instrumental version of "Little Wing", and Lonnie Mack's "Wham" as well.

"The Sky Is Crying" also features Willie Dixon's "Close To You", a supremely jazzy "Chitlins Con Carne", the SRV orginal "So Excited" (also an instrumental), and finally one of Vaughan's best-ever performances, an acoustic solo rendition of Doyle Bramhall's wonderful survivor story "Life By The Drop". Sublime "live" vocal on that one, one of the best things Stevie Ray Vaughan ever committed to tape.

A fitting swansong
Put together after Stevie's death, this album is quite frankly superb. Asit was put together from a few years of sessions, you get a few differentvibes from him, instead of a specific vibe per album. It's got somerocking blues to his more tender side, which is what i want from an album.
I also want to add that 'Life by the Drop' is the perfect and mostbeautiful close for Stevie as a musician (although his legacy lives oninside eveyone who loves him). Not many songs can move me as much as 'Lifeby the Drop'. I cannot state enough, it's absolute perfection for hislast 'semi-proper' album - before the greatest hits albums came out.
It brings a tear to my eye everytime i hear it.
Anyway, my general point is that this album proves to be a fittingswansong to one of the few musicans who was truely touched by god. I'm notreligious but Stevie had what Hendrix had. I have no idea where it camefrom but i adore it.
My advice to everyone is to buy all his albums and listen to them inorder, while reading a SRV book of some sort.
You don't hear that many albums as good as this nowadays
RIP Stevie