Biography

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Linsey Alexander – Come Back Baby
Delmark DE 838 (2014)

Both critically acclaimed and the best-selling album for Delmark in recent times, 2012’s Been There Done That put Linsey Alexander in the blues spotlight. “Throughout Alexander sings with a conviction and verve that few can equal. This should be his break-out recording.” Gary von Tersch, Big City Rhythm & Blues Similar to the first album, Come Back Baby is full of delightful new originals including “Little Bit of Soap”, “Booty Call”, “Call My Wife”, “Things Done Changed”, “Too Old To Be A New Fool” and the title track. Once again Linsey led his nine-piece band live in the studio with special guest Billy Branch on harmonica.


The Hoochie Man is back! Chicago blues artist Linsey Alexander’s first Delmark album, 2012’s Been There Done That, established him well outside the North Side club circuit that he’s thrived on since the ‘90s (he recently performed in Europe and South America). Come Back Baby proves that critically acclaimed disc was no fluke. 11 of the 13 tracks on this new album are splendid originals spotlighting his stinging, slashing lead guitar and gritty, satisfying vocals. Notes by Bill Dahl enclosed.


1. Little Bit Of Soap 3:07
2. Booze And Blues 4:08
3. I Got A Woman 7:18
4. Come Back Baby 3:13
5. Call My Wife 4:45
6. Things Done Changed 4:50
7. Can’t Drink, Can’t Sleep, Can’t Eat 5:37
8. Booty Call 6:11
9. Too Old To Be A New Fool 6:37
10. Snowing In Chicago 4:09
11. I Can’t Quit You Baby 6:56
12. Funky Feeling 3:55
13. Goin’ Out Walkin’ 3:38

Linsey Alexander, vocals, guitar
Breezy Rodio, guitar
Roosevelt Purifoy, keyboards
Greg McDaniel, bass
Pooky Styx, drums
Ryan Nyther, trumpet
Bill Mcfarland, trombone
Chris Neal, tenor sax
Billy Branch, harmonica (5, 7, 9)


All songs written by Linsey Alexander, Hoochieman Music, BMI except 1 by Frank & Mary Lopez and 11 by Willie Dixon, Hoochie Coochie Music, BMI

Special thanks to God, the Delmark family, the musicians – a great bunch of guys, Fabrizio Rodio who helped with musical arrangements and plays the guitar solo on “Come Back Baby”, Steve Wagner for his good ears and everyone who bought this album. – Linsey Alexander

Delmark would like to thank Reggie’s Music Joint for allowing us to use their bus for the album cover photo, Rob Glick and Dave Katzman for arranging this and to model Tasha Gallimore.

Produced Linsey Alexander and Steve Wagner
Album Production and Supervision: Robert G. Koester
Recorded at Riverside Studio Chicago, February 11, 12, 2014 by Steve Wagner
Photo by Chris Monaghan, MoPho
Design by Djavan Wagner



The Hoochie Man is back!

Chicago blues artist Linsey Alexander’s first Delmark album, 2012’s Been There Done That, established him well outside the North Side club circuit that he’s thrived on since the ‘90s (he recently performed in Europe and South America). Come Back Baby proves that critically acclaimed disc was no fluke. 11 of the 13 tracks on this new album are splendid originals spotlighting his stinging, slashing lead guitar and gritty, satisfying vocals.
“I like writing all my stuff,” says Alexander, who proves equally conversant with straightahead blues and grooving soul-slanted material on this set. The roiling shuffle “Booze And Blues,” a pounding “Can’t Drink, Can’t Sleep, Can’t Eat” (featuring a dazzling Billy Branch harp solo, one of several that the harmonica master contributes to this set), the wry “Call My Wife,” the lights-out “Too Old To Be A New Fool” and “I Got A Woman” (not the Ray Charles perennial) indicate the quality of Linsey’s songwriting in a straight blues mode.
Alexander turns serious when discussing the insightful “Things Done Changed.” “It ain’t like it used to be,” he said. “I remember the time when I couldn’t go in a restaurant. I had to be served outside. Had to go to a different bathroom and all that. So that’s how that came about.”
Then there’s “Booty Call,” a slightly salacious piece of work that offers insight into the mindset behind Alexander’s nickname. “Marvin Sease made a record, ‘I’m Gonna Get Me A Hoochie Mama.’ I never recorded it, but I did a song called ‘I’m A Hoochie Man,’” he says. “I answered it. Then they started calling me the Hoochie Man.”
Developing his own distinctive sound on guitar didn’t come overnight for Linsey. “It started out like I was hearing the Alberts and the B.B.s and everybody else,” he says. “I never could perfect what they were doing. So I just turned myself a little and just do what I can do, and bless myself with my style. This is my style, so now I ain’t got to worry about doing what the Alberts and the B.B.s do. I just play me. And everybody likes me.”
Linsey was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi (also the birthplace of Syl Johnson) in 1942 and moved with his family to blues-soaked Memphis when he was 12. There he began playing through a guitar-playing pal. “A guy named Otis, he was a friend of mine,” says Linsey. “He would come by the house, and he would sit down and just play. And I used to watch him.
“I went and bought another guitar, and I had a nephew trying to play it. One day Otis came by my house and he left the guitar. When he left the guitar, he never came back, so I gave my guitar to my nephew and took Otis’ guitar,” he says. “When I got ready to leave, I put it in the pawnshop and got me money to come to Chicago.”
Music wasn’t on Alexander’s mind when he embarked for the Windy City around 1960. He was pursuing a young lady he’d become friendly with when she was vacationing in Memphis. Unfortunately, he arrived in the middle of a blizzard. “I got trapped in it,” he laughs. “I came here lookin’ for my woman, and I made a mistake. I should have stayed in Memphis!”
Eventually he acquired another axe. “I started hanging out at a place on 63rd Street called the Place Lounge,” says Linsey. I put a little band together called the Hot Tomatoes, and we did good.
“The Hot Tomatoes, we were doing like ‘Let It All Hang Out,’ ‘I got a necktie made out of barbed wire’ (Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love’),” he says. “We were doing all covers.” Alexander’s Equitable Band subsequently spent eight years holding down the bandstand at the Launching Pad at 75th and Stony Island. “That was my soul days. James Brown, Teddy Pendergrass. I could sing it good. Tyrone Davis, the Commodores.”
There was an intriguing hookup with drummer Red Saunders, once the bandleader at the Regal Theater. “Red would book the shows, and we would come out and play,” says Linsey. “It was called the Red Saunders Revue. And he would come out and play for awhile, and then he’d turn us loose.”
Alexander’s blues conversion transpired by sheer chance. “I was on Western Avenue, and a man came up. He said, ‘My buddy’s going to jail. I need a blues band. Can you be a blues band?’ I said, ‘You want some blues?’” he says. “We weren’t making but $35 a man. But we played the blues. That’s how I started playing the blues.” He had an affinity for it.
“I used to go see Howlin’ Wolf every Wednesday down on 39th, a place called the Playhouse. Then I used to go see Lefty Dizz and them down at the Blue Flame, down on 39th Street.” Alexander and Johnny Drummer joined forces for a time. “They needed a band at the Checkerboard,” he says. “I was the guitar player. And we used to back up Buddy and Lefty Dizz.
“Buddy was going to Australia or somewhere, and he wanted to take us with him. They was talking about setting it up. I said, ‘I ain’t going.’ By that time, I had too much stuff going for me.”
Alexander was gigging at a South Side nightspot called Red’s when a manager helped him make his move north. “He come in there and said, ‘Hey, man, you’re too good to be in here!’” says Linsey. “So he booked me on the North Side everywhere.” He remains a regular attraction at Kingston Mines and Buddy Guy’s Legends.
Past 70, his musical career still growing, Alexander remains his own man. He’s free to play his blues the way he pleases, to be the Hoochie Man with a devilish glint in his eye and an arsenal of tough guitar licks at his beck and call.
“What my mind tells me to do, that’s what I do,” he says. “The B.B.s and the Alberts, they’re great. I wish I was one of them, but I’m not. So I have to be me.”
We’re glad he is.
--Bill Dahl

Other Delmark albums of interest:
Linsey Alexander, Been There Done That (822)
Junior Wells, Hoodoo Man Blues (612) with Buddy Guy
Magic Sam, West Side Soul (615)
Toronzo Cannon, John The Conquer Root (831)
Mike Wheeler, Self Made Man (824)
Quintus McCormick, Hey Jodie (801)
Dave Specter, Message In Blue (836) with Otis Clay
Syl Johnson, Back In The Game (674) with Hi Rhythm
Robert Ward, New Role Soul (741)
The Big DooWopper, All In The Joy (742)
Lurrie Bell, Blues In My Soul (830)
Sharon Lewis, The Real Deal (816)

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