DESCRIPTION:
Willie Kent & Willie James Lyons - Ghetto
Live at "Ma Bea's", 3001 W. Madison, 17th October 1975.
Recorded by Marcelle Morgantini. Label: Storyville Records

Willie Kent: Bass, Vocals
Willie James Lyons: Guitar
Tyrone Centuray: Drums

1. Little Red Rooster (Big Guitar Red: Guitar)
2. Nineteen Years Old (?: Guitar)
3. What Will To-morrow Bring (Big Guitar Red: Guitar)
4. I'm Not The Same Person (Luther Guitar Jr. Johnson: Guitar)
5. Ghetto (Luther Guitar Jr. Johnson: Guitar)
6. Dust My Broom (Big Guitar Red: Guitar)
7. I Wonder Why (?: Guitar)
8. You Don't Love Me (?: Guitar)
9. Chili Con Carne (Big Guitar Red: Guitar)
10. Blue Guitar (Big Guitar Red: Guitar)
11. Sweet Home Chicago (Luther Guitar Jr. Johnson: Guitar)
12. Bobby's Rock (Big Guitar Red: Guitar)
13. Tell Him He Got To Go (Luther Guitar Jr. Johnson: Guitar)
14. Chicken Shack (Big Guitar Red: Guitar)

Willie James Lyons (1938-1980) was born in a family of musicians in Alabama but came very young to Chicago, started playing guitar at the age of 7 and played professional at 14! This album is the first that he has recorded. He was very personal musiscian, an exceptional creator with inventive ideas, with phrases full of lyrism and feeling. His beautiful warm and pure tone allows one to identify him from the first notes. Great soloist and accompanist.
Willie Kent (1936-2006), the preeminent Chicago blues bassist of the postwar era, was the city's last surviving link to the Mississippi Delta tradition, backing a who's who of immortals including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Junior Parker as well as fronting his own long-running band, the Gents. He was the singer of this band, who every night played for the black audience at the Ma Bea's on Chicago's West Side. Born in Inverness, MS, Willie was the product of a sharecropping family, and was enlisted to pick cotton at the age of six, while local musician Dewitt Munson afforded his first exposure to the blues. He had very pure, intense voice which perfectly expresses the deep emotion of the blues.
On this album plays (excluding Luther 'Gutar Jr.' Johnson) another great Chicago bluesman, famous among the musicians of Chicago and completely unknown outside Chicago's area, Mississippi born, Big Guitar Red (Walter W. Smith, 1925-1997). He plays the lead using a botleneck and the slide technique with great effect.