Sunnyland Slim, "Be Careful How You Vote"
  • You Can't Have It All
  • Workin' Two Jobs
  • Have A Good Day Now
  • Chicago Jump
  • Past Life
  • Be Careful How You Vote
  • Johnson Machine Gun
  • Speak Once and Think Twice
  • Midnight Jump
  • Patience Like Job
  • You Can't Have It All
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (04:40) [10.69 MB]
  • Workin' Two Jobs
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (03:08) [7.18 MB]
  • Have A Good Day Now
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (03:48) [8.7 MB]
  • Chicago Jump
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (04:13) [9.66 MB]
  • Past Life
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (04:48) [11 MB]
  • Be Careful How You Vote
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (03:36) [8.23 MB]
  • Johnson Machine Gun
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (03:48) [8.7 MB]
  • Speak Once and Think Twice
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (05:02) [11.51 MB]
  • Midnight Jump
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (04:06) [9.39 MB]
  • Patience Like Job
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (04:08) [9.48 MB]
Biography
For more information, contact:
Michael Frank, CEO
Earwig Music Company, Inc.
2054 W. Farwell Ave.
Chicago, IL 60645
e-mail mfrank@earwigmusic.com
office phone 773-262-0278
Click here to go to Earwig Music Company

Exhibiting truly amazing longevity that was commensurate with his powerful, imposing physical build, Sunnyland Slim’s status as a beloved Chicago piano patriarch endured long after most of his peers had perished. For more than 50 years, the towering Sunnyland had rumbled the ivories around the Windy City, playing with virtually every local luminary imaginable and backing the great majority in the studio at one time or another.

He was born Albert Luandrew in Mississippi and received his early training on a pump organ. After entertaining at juke joints and movie houses in the Delta, Luandrew made Memphis his homebase during the late ’20s, playing along Beale Street and hanging out with the likes of Little Brother Montgomery and Ma Rainey.

He adopted his colorful stage name from the title of one of his best-known songs, the mournful “Sunnyland Train.” (The downbeat piece immortalized the speed and deadly power of a St. Louis-to-Memphis locomotive that mowed down numerous people unfortunate enough to cross its tracks at the wrong instant.)

Slim moved to Chicago in 1939 and set up shop as an in-demand piano man, playing for a spell with John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson before waxing eight sides for RCA Victor in 1947 under the somewhat misleading handle of “Doctor Clayton’s Buddy.” If it hadn’t been for the helpful Sunnyland, Muddy Waters may not have found his way onto Chess; it was at the pianist’s 1947 session for Aristocrat that the Chess brothers made Waters’s acquaintance.

Aristocrat (which issued his harrowing “Johnson Machine Gun”) was but one of a myriad of labels that Sunnyland recorded for between 1948 and 1956: Hytone, Opera, Chance, Tempo-Tone, Mercury, Apollo, JOB, Regal, Vee-Jay (unissued), Blue Lake, Club 51, and Cobra all cut dates on Slim, whose vocals thundered with the same resonant authority as his 88s. In addition, his distinctive playing enlivened hundreds of sessions by other artists during the same timeframe.

In 1960, Sunnyland Slim traveled to Englewood Cliffs, NJ, to cut his debut LP for Prestige’s Bluesville subsidiary with King Curtis supplying diamond-hard tenor sax breaks on many cuts. The album, Slim’s Shout, ranks as one of his finest, with definitive renditions of the pianist’s “The Devil Is a Busy Man,” “Shake It,” “Brownskin Woman,” and “It’s You Baby.”

Like a deep-rooted tree, Sunnyland Slim persevered despite the passing decades. For a time, he helmed his own label, Airway Records. As late as 1985, he made a fine set for the Red Beans logo, Chicago Jump, backed by the same crack combo that shared the stage with him every Sunday evening at a popular North side club called B.L.U.E.S. for some 12 years.

There were times when the pianist fell seriously ill, but he always defied the odds and returned to action, warbling his trademark Woody Woodpecker chortle and kicking off one more exultant slow blues as he had done for the previous half century. Finally, after a calamitous fall on the ice coming home from a gig led to numerous complications, Sunnyland Slim finally died of kidney failure March 17, 1995. He’s sorely missed.

In addition to having 2 reissues on Earwig of Sunnyland's Airway lps, he also played piano on 4 Earwig albums - Old Friends, David Honeyboy Edwards' Delta Bluesman, Lester Davenport's When The Blues Hit You and an as yet unreleased
album by Willie Johnson, whom Sunnyland had encouraged Earwig CEO Michael Frank to bring out of retirement.

-Written by Bill Dahl
30
  • Members:
    Sunnyland Slim
  • Sounds Like:
    Traditional Chicago Blues Piano and 1950s Chicago blues band
  • Influences:
    Memphis Slim, Otis Spann, Pinetop Perkins
  • AirPlay Direct Member Since:
    11/08/11
  • Profile Last Updated:
    08/15/23 20:34:12

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