Sunnyland Slim — Rockin’ the House

What if?

The blues has as many such hypotheticals as John Lee Hooker has actual records (official plus bootleg). For starters:

What if Robert Johnson had plugged in?

What if T-Bone Walker hadn’t plugged in?

What if Albert Collins gravitated to a Gibson Les Paul instead of a Fender Telecaster?

What if Koko Taylor had not caught the ear of Willie Dixon on that consequential impromptu night in Silvio’s?

What if razor-throated Tommy McClennan launched a comeback during the Great Blues Revival of the 1960s, instead of drinking himself into an early grave by ’61?

What if Pat Hare had not terminated his amp-brutalizing career by following through on “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby”?

Or what if Muddy Waters never came aboard Chess Record?

Thanks to Sunnyland Slim—a major dot-connector during the glory days of Chicago blues—one of those scenarios was historically averted.

But the pianist with thunder fingers and a bullhorn built into this throat wasn’t always making blues history with others. Some evenings—like this standout one in 1975—he simply did so alone. No partnerships: No Howlin’ Wolf, Eddie Taylor, John Brim, J.B. Lenoir, Homesick James, or Sonny Boy Williamson I. No Walter Horton, Johnny Shines, Lonnie Johnson, J.B. Hutto, Robert Lockwood, or Memphis Minnie. No Canned Heat.

No, tonight is just Sunnyland, a creatively abused piano, and an appreciative crowd who eats up his 19-song set.

Luckily, someone was running a recorder that night Slim came to town, one of the whistle-stops along a tour of Europe he made that year. The Vienna Blues Fan Club had extended the invitation; he accepted, attended, and set straight to work, Rockin’ the House. Because doing so was second nature.

Sunnyland Slim—or Albert Luandrew, as his mother knew him—was born in 1906, in Vance, Mississippi—southeast of Clarksdale, down Highway 49, closer to Tutwiler. There, he did his training in jukes, movie houses (supplying organ soundtracks to silent films) and lumber camps before permanently setting up shop in Chicago by 1939ish. Accordingly, his style adapted to the conditions of roughhouse venues. Namely, pianos took a beating. Plus, his voice boomed in order to keep noisy, raucous crowds on the hook.

That authority commands the room here. Or more fittingly: Rocks the house. So regardless of whether tempos bolt (“Sunnyland’s Boogie”), chug (“It’s You, Baby”), creep (“Travelin’ Blues”) or crawl (“Tin Pan Alley”), a stomping foot remains the constant response throughout this full hour. Slim’s own spicy “She’s Got a Thing Goin’ On” and hellbent “Got to Get to My Baby” mingle with piano-only adaptations of bedrock standards. “Call It Stormy Monday But Tuesday Is Just As Bad,” for example, keeps right on rating the rotten days of the week, just as T-Bone designed. Jimmy Rogers’ “That’s All Right” is no less jilted with a striding bass line now substituting as its sulking heartbeat.

More daring than those? Enter “Dust My Broom”—the Robert Johnson-via-Elmore James benchmark for slide guitarists (as “Lady of Spain” was for accordionists and “Wipe Out” was for drummers). It remains a galloping romp, except rattled keys now get pummeled instead of bottlenecked strings. Yet not even that degree of battery proves a match for his singing, able to cut through the rumble—all the more so when slingshotting lyrics with extra force. “Howlin’ Wolf Medley” goes one better, invoking Slim’s best growly imitation of Big Chester, much to the crowd’s roaring delight.

“Smile On My Face” is classic blues bait-and-switch, sucker punching with a soured sentiment diametrically opposed to its enticing title. “Goin’ Down Slow,” on the other hand, is absolute truth in advertising. Still, the gut-punch anthem gets nicely aerated by steel-fingered flourishes bubbling up through the bleak fatalism. But then again, Sunnyland’s sporting right hand drops brisk filigree all night long. The title track serves as the antidote, quickly burning off all this gloom in a boogying blaze. A heavy left hand fills all the space between the melodic treble work of his decorative right: One takes the low road; the other takes the high road; swift waterfalls of notes tumble down between them.

But circling back to ponder those blues scenarios. Slim’s keyboard skills surfaced all over Chicago, nearly up until 1995, when his 88-year-old kidneys gave out; a mountain of records credited to him proves the fact. And, in doing so, he also served as connective tissue tethering together musicians, and, in some cases, directing the course of evolutionary events.

One of the more fateful stories goes that Sunnyland brought his own personally invited guitar accompanist to a 1947 session for Aristocrat Records (“Johnson Machine Gun” was part of the output). That was when Muddy Waters is said to have met the Chess brothers for the first time. Not long after, another of the pianist’s recording dates, again with Muddy in tow, backed an upstart singing harpist by the tradename of Little Walter. They say “Blue Baby b/w I Want My Baby,” for the Tempo-Tone label, was the first recorded pairing of Walter with Waters. Crisis avoided.

So when the legendary Sunnyland Slim shows up to put your piano through a thorough workout, you make sure to show up as well as to roll tape to preserve the night “The Devil Is a Busy Man” filled the Austrian air.

Label: Wolf

Release date: 6/6/25

Label website: Wolf Records

Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski