Let me say I'm a Tony Joe White fan and have been since I bought Black and White in my final school year, 1969. I was very disappointed with this pressing though. For a start, no where on the cover does it tell you its 45RPM, wont matter to some but it matters to me, I have an audiophile turntable that plays 331/3 only. But it is the pops and clicks in a Mint unopened pressing and the fact that both discs are not flat but concave on Sides 2 & 4 and convex on sides 1 & 3, so much so that Sides 1 & 3 are unplayable ... maybe with a heavy weight they might be able to be played to a degree, but heavy weights aren't good for turntable bearings and really should not be necessary..... poor Tony sounds out of breath and struggling in some places ... for me not the album I want to remember him for ... The copy I'm talking about is cat# YEP 2593 US 2018 Ltd, Sky.
I first came across Tony Joe back in the 60’s when he made his way to California, and while not quite a hippie, he was a man of the road then, and has never been off of it for most of his life.
Tony Joe is one of the most consistent artists I know, though with that consistency, one could easily and rightly so ask, “Just how many Tony Joe albums do I need?” For me, that’s a difficult question to answer, as all of his outings offer up something new and exciting, even if it’s but one perfect song that I’m able to add to an ever-growing collection of his material, songs ride comfortably in my weathered back pocket. To date that’s about forty simmering numbers that I find relentlessly compelling. That may seem like an odd thing for me to admit, especially since I rate many of his albums very highly … the point is, his hushed whispered vocals and lo-fi presentation have been settling around me like warm air lightly blowing through the half open door of an abandon roadhouse on some off the interstate backroads adventure, in some small town that’s disappearing off the map even as I sit there in the half-light at a dusty table looking at that map, trying to figure out where I am.
There’s nothing fast about Tony Joe, though if you listen closely, he’s buzzing around the room like a big ol’ swamp fly lookin’ for a place to roost. Here on Bad Mouthin’, Tony takes you on a magnificent sonic adventure, one lavishly embroidered with ragged edges held together by gold thread, with the album consisting of five blistering original numbers infused with seven established blues tracks, all delivered on his well used 1965 Fender Stratocaster, the same guitar I saw him use back in San Francisco so many years ago. With all of the songs sounding mournful, they’re presented in a slay manner, as if Tony Joe knows a secret, and to understand that secret, all you have to do is sit back and listen. Amazingly enough, “Sundown Blues” and the title track “Bad Mouthin’” stretch back to the 60’s, being two of his earliest recordings, rediscovered and lightly reworked here for the first time.
Elementally so, Tony Joe is the spot on the musical map where lo-fi begins and ends. Of course others have tried their hand at this sparse pared back sound, yet no one I’ve come across even comes close to Tony’s idiosyncratic interpretations, featuring White’s road weary haggard voice, where he often drops out of singing verse and simply lays out some talkin’ blues to his wasted strummings that never fail to captivate. Simply put, Bad Mouthin’ is stark understated blues, the kind of thing you’ve always imagined blues to be, yet just never managed to cross paths with.
So while Tony Joe may not be standing at the proverbial crossroads dueling with the devil, he’s certainly enticed the devil to pull up a comfortable overstuffed chair, strike a match, watch the blue smoke trail off to the ceiling and simply waste away the afternoon listening to Tony Joe White do what he’s been doing for my entire life … and with sheer perfection here.