Mike Finnigan – Mike Finnigan
★★★★★
FORTY BELOW
Mike Finnigan: if you know you know, and if you don’t, you probably know Electric Ladyland. In June 1968, The Jimi Hendrix Experience were booked into New York’s Record Plant, as were The Serfs from Wichita, Kansas, cutting their only album, The Early Bird Café. “Jimi happened to hear us and said he’d like to have us play on his record,” the Hammond B-3 maestro Mike Finnigan told MOJO in 2008. “Jimi was very easy-going, very loose. His notion was the Jimmy Smith organ quartet with a different kind of slant, and we jammed it down on the spot. If I’d had any sense I’d have got some writer’s credit on that Rainy Day deal. And I never got paid for the session, by God!”
Was this the moment the affably self-effacing Finnigan heard his calling as a sideman to bigger egos? Stars from Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy and Ben Sidran to Cher, Rod Stewart, Leonard Cohen, Alice Cooper, Ringo Starr and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young would call on his services, with only two ’70s solo albums released in his lifetime. Four years after his passing, this third is a stellar showcase of Finnigan’s instrumental, vocal and band-leading prowess, gift of the groove and genius for swaggering reinvigoration of deep cut Americana. Think Boz Scaggs, think Robert Palmer, think Ry Cooder.
Only The Temptations’ The Way You Do The Things You Do, including a vocal cameo by its writer Smokey Robinson, is a household banger, cleverly transplanted south from Detroit for a brass-fat, easy-rolling New Orleans feel, as are the less familiar My Credit Didn’t Go Through by The Chairmen Of The Board’s General Johnson and 8th Day’s She’s Not Just Another Woman, both originally on Holland-Dozier-Holland’s Invictus label. It was all remade in Hollywood with inspirational producer JJ Blair and seasoned session aces including drummers Tony Braunagel, David Goodstein, James Gadson and Pete Thomas, bassists Bob Glaub and Davey Faragher, guitarists Josh Sklair and Val McCallum plus blues axe hero Joe Bonamassa and Finnigan’s son Kelly and old pal Steven Stills cooking mightily to serve songs ranging from Reverend Edward W Clayborn’s Let That Liar Alone in 1928 to Curtis Salgado’s 2008 tune 20 Years Of BB King — who in turn is represented by the Jimmy Johnson-penned Don’t Answer The Door. (All other pleasures aside, this peach of an album tempts you down myriad discographical rabbit holes.)
Among these dud-free 11 tracks which also reboot The Impressions, Ben E King, Delbert McClinton and Little Feat, Merle Haggard’s Sing Me Back Home rendered a la Ray Charles tells a bigger story: entreating the Almighty with the end approaching, a late, great thing of joy by a master hiding in plain sight.
Mike Finnigan is out March 20 on Forty Below.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.mojo4music.com ’
