Louisiana Red - Dead Stray Dog

Limited time album download included

Louisiana Red (born Iverson Minter) was a flamboyant guitarist, harmonica player, and vocalist. He lost his parents early in life through multiple tragedies; his mother died of pneumonia a week after his birth, and his father was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan when he was five.

Red began recording for Chess in 1949, then joined the Army. After his discharge, he played with John Lee Hooker in Detroit for almost two years in the late '50s, and continued through the '60s and '70s with recording sessions for Chess, Checker, Atlas, Glover, Roulette, L&R, and Tomato, among others.

"Red's career was stalled by the '70s, partly because he still hadn't really found his own blues voice, sounding like Muddy Waters more than anything, but things turned around when he signed with Blue Labor Records. Blue Labor was run by a pair of musicians, jazz arranger Kent Cooper and composer Heiner Stadler, and they saw in Red not another Muddy Waters, but something closer to Lightnin' Hopkins or John Lee Hooker, and they helped Red find his own voice through four albums for the label in the '70s, including this one recorded in 1975, which features Louisiana Red solo and acoustic, and doing original material (a lot of it co-penned by Cooper). The no-frills recording approach makes this one of Red's best and most original albums." — AllMusic

Louisiana Red moved to Hanover, Germany in 1981, and maintained a busy recording and performing schedule through the subsequent decades into the new millennium. He died in Germany in 2012 when his thyroid imbalance brought on a stroke.

 

1. Dead Stray Dog

2. New Jersey Women

3. Held Up In One Town

4. Bad Case Of The Blues

5. Caught My Man And Gone

6. My Heart’s A Loser

7. Riding On A Tall White Horse

8. Cold White Sheet

9. Going Train Blues

10. Back To The Road Again

11. My Baby’s Coming Home

12. Cold Feeling

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