Album Notes

ABOUT THE "LIVE" CD: "Not many of us left of the old school, but they don't come any better than Big George Brock." After this brief testimonial by 80-year-old Sonny Payne of Helena, Arkansas' famed King Biscuit Time radio show, Big George Brock tells the packed house that he's "here to please you, not to tease you." Then, he goes on to prove it throughout this brand-new, hour-long live album — the much heralded follow-up to Brock's Blues Music Award-nominated "Round Two." After 67 years of singing blues and playing harmonica, 75-year-old Brock IS the blues. Best known for his high-energy, "step-back-in-time" live shows, it's fitting that Brock recorded this incredible concert performance on the eve of his 75th birthday at world-famous Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi — his old stomping grounds. Brock mixes his own fine originals with highly-personalized covers, the band is hot and the results are magical. ABOUT BIG GEORGE BROCK: Big George Brock may well be one of the most underrated blues harmonica players and vocalists of his generation. He isn't as widely known as other older, Delta-moved-North blues brothers like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, partly due to the fact that he was younger and he didn't start recording until later in life. As a busy blues club owner, family man and part-time boxer, he passed up early recording opportunities. Still, his back catalog is dwarfed by his bigger-than-life performance style and more-than-capable musical talents. With the Mississippi Delta of his youth just a breath away, Brock's huge harmonica sound and Deep South voice are instantly recognizable. They also stand out clearly against today's world of rock and soul-inflected blues performers just as they stand comfortably along side yesterday's world of distinctive, self-made blues men. Brock's every sound and every word hearken back to his days singing work songs for relief from the hotter than hot sun -- the heat one only finds in a Delta cotton field. His harmonica style most closely parallels Little Walter but with more emphasis on melody, or as Brock once put it, "I want my harmonica to say what my voice says." His vocal style most closely parallels Muddy Waters but with a toughness and strength that echoes the great Howlin' Wolf. Brock was born May 16, 1932, in Grenada, Mississippi, the son of a sharecropper. Like other aspiring musicians in the area, he experimented with paper-and-comb "harmonicas" and one-string, diddley bow guitars in an attempt to mimic the rich blues and spiritual music he heard around him. At age 8, his father gave him and two of his brothers each a harmonica for Christmas. "They tore theirs up, but I kept mine," Brock later remembered. Initially self-taught, one evening Brock blew the melody to the traditional church song, "Burden Down." His parents heard him, and began to request amateur concerts on the family porch once a week. After moving to Flower's Plantation in Mattson, Mississippi, near Clarksdale, Brock came under the influence of future blues legend Muddy Waters. Waters lived at the nearby Stovall plantation and would play fish fries and house parties around Clarksdale and Mattson. As a young man, Brock would play in improvised bands, often accompanied by other youths playing homemade rhythm instruments. Growing up in the Delta, Brock also witnessed area performances by B.B. King (playing in front of Dublin Grocery near Flower's), Sonny Boy Williamson II (at Brock's auntie's house), Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf (playing weekly gigs in Walls, Mississippi), Lee Kizart (with whom Brock played music) and Ike Turner among others. In addition to blues music, the other popular Delta pastime in the 1940s and 50s was boxing -- another form of entertainment that Brock excelled at. In the Mattson-Clarksdale area, Brock defeated the "toughest man in Clarksdale," Charlie Black, as well as a traveling, wrestling bear. (Later, in St. Louis, Brock would also knockout a recently p