Live in Chicago (CD - 2008)

Audio Mixers: Dave Katzman; Eric Butkus; Steve Wagner .

Recording information: Buddy Guy's Legends (08/20/2007-08/21/2007); Rosa's Blues Lounge (08/20/2007-08/21/2007).

Photographer: Harvey Tillis.

Guitarist Dave Specter bears the torch for Chicago electric blues, and on LIVE IN CHICAGO the Windy City native gets a chance to strut his stuff. Specter's clean, crisp playing is elegant, but carries enough sting and swing to keep things lively. Joined by a crack band and three guest vocalists, Specter blazes through a mix of originals (some penned by Specter himself, and some by his guests Sharon Lewis and Tad Robinson) that have the hometown crowd hooting and hollering. Chicago blues fans who pick up this disc will be taken back home.

There are still some die-hard purists in the blues world who want nothing to do with rock, soul, or jazz and refuse to perform anything that doesn't adhere to a traditional 12-bar structure, but people who fit that description have become harder and harder to find. Go to a major event like the annual Chicago Blues Festival in downtown Chicago's Grant Park, and you will not only encounter disciples of Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, or John Lee Hooker -- you will also find blues-oriented performers who have been influenced by Tower of Power, Jimi Hendrix, Richard "Groove" Holmes, or Ike & Tina Turner. One of the bluesmen who has been contributing to that diversity is guitarist Dave Specter, whose Live in Chicago was recorded in August 2007 at two of the Windy City's blues clubs: Buddy Guy's Legends and Rosa's Blues Lounge. Specter, true to form, gets his inspiration from a variety of places, tackling everything from electric 12-bar blues on Chick Willis' "Feel So Bad" and Jimmy Rogers' "Out on the Road" (both of which feature singer Jimmy Johnson) to instrumental soul-jazz on "Is What It Is." Specter even embraces a country-rock song: Tom T. Hall's "That's How I Got to Memphis," one of three selections featuring Tad Robinson on vocals. Specter and Robinson, however, don't approach "That's How I Got to Memphis" as country-rock, but rather as Southern soul of the Stax/Malaco variety -- and considering that Hall was never a country purist any more than Specter has been a blues purist, it isn't terribly surprising that one of Hall's compositions would find its way to an R&B performance in a blues-oriented (though not blues-exclusive) environment. And speaking of R&B, singer Sharon Lewis' soul credentials make their presence felt when she joins Specter on "In Too Deep" and the gospel-ish "Angel" (which straddles the fence between the secular and the spiritual). Live in Chicago is a consistently rewarding demonstration of Specter's versatility. ~ Alex Henderson minimize