*** J.T. Brown

WINDY CITY BOOGIE

(Delmark)

Saxman J.T. Brown's United sides aren't merely an exciting chronicle of the '50s blues honkers' craft. They sound like a missing link between blues and rock and roll. This even though the drummer providing that flat-four, driving thump is none other than classic old-time-blues sticksman S.P. Leary -- a veteran of the bands of Muddy Waters and others -- and the pianist ain't Chuck Berry's Johnnie Johnson but the Mississippi backwater-bred virtuoso Sunnyland Slim. Brown (once described as "the only man who could make a horn sound like a nanny goat") blows hard on the beat, and though he's not much of a singer, he hits his vocal notes with the same outright attack he applies to sax. Mostly he keeps things campy and uptempo; it's a fitting approach for his ebullient, house-rocking nature, and that's what makes this CD such a hearty good time. Boomer rock fans might recall Brown's playing on Fleetwood Mac's Blues Jam at Chess, which was recorded 10 months before his death in November 1969.

-- Ted Drozdowski