Various — The Last Real Texas Blues Album

If you build it, they will come. And that they have—in droves.

The Last Real Texas Blues Album is a testament to the magnetic pull of Antone’s, the hotspot of Lone Star hotspots. The nightclub that Clifford Antone opened in 1975—having served as the testing ground for homegrown godheads like Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds (brother Jimmie Vaughan and Kim Wilson’s original joint venture), and Gary Clark Jr.—put Austin on the map as a must-hear destination. And a must-play destination as well, having drawn Muddy, B.B. and Buddy in addition to the likes of James Cotton, Albert Collins and Jimmy Rogers to Pinetop Perkins, Little Milton and Snooky Prior. Yep, even Omar and the Howlers as well as Boozoo Chavis have been among the ad infinitum horde. And the list has never stopped growing, with performers still constantly arriving on the stage.

To honor the 50th anniversary of that Texas oasis, a legion of today’s players recently swarmed from in-state and out-of-state to be a part of this blowout celebratory album. That’s Chicago’s Lurrie Bell, for instance, staring you down through the cover’s purple tint. Gathered with him inside a recording studio was an army of fellow revelers ready to mix it up in the name of the venue that helped nurture their careers.

Accordingly, The Last Real Texas Blues Album—a play on The Last Real Texas Blues Band, Doug Sahm’s 1995 release on Antone’s Records that earned a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album—is quite the bash. The lineup offers a stellar vantage point for stargazing as a constant stream of headliners parades past by way of a setlist that nicely jumbles everyone within its 18 songs. That’s how Freddie King’s anthem “Going Down” immediately matches Jimmie Vaughan’s grumbling Stratocaster with Bobby Rush’s rousing vocals. (Not to be left out, Rush also gets in his licks on buzzing harmonica.) “Willie the Wimp,” which Stevie Ray tucked into his repertoire, gets newly led by one of the finest accordionists that zydeco has to offer in C.J. Chenier.

And “Lookin’ Good,” the Magic Sam instrumental, goes bonkers even if Z.Z. Top’s Billy F. Gibbons hadn’t tossed gasoline on an already frenzied fire by hollering out some kick-in-the-pants motivation. Regardless, this manic triple-guitar pandemonium (Lurrie Bell, Eve Monsees, Mike Keller) is still somewhat safer and certainly tastier than licking an electric eel to get such a full-body jolt.

John Primer takes “Honest I Do”—the lazily loping serenade with which Jimmy Reed seduced the world in 1957, including a young, impressionable band by the name the Rolling Stones, who included it on their 1964 debut. The singing guitarist, no stranger to Antone’s bandstand starting with his early-1980s days in the Muddy Waters Band, keeps the pump-action motion intact, over which he glides its lovestruck lines. “Flip, Flop and Fly,” energetically swung by Jivin’ Gene Bourgeois, bounces off the walls just as Big Joe Turner originally intended. Sue Foley respects Lazy Lester’s slow-fast-slow arrangement of “You Got Me Where You Want Me,” a soapbox for the clearwater quality of her singing and the cool burn of her pink, paisley Telecaster. The wide-open spaciousness of Texas resides in these four hypnotizing-jostling-hypnotizing minutes.

However, the returning Lurrie Bell breaks from slide god Elmore James’ blueprint for “The Sky Is Crying.” Without those wrecking-ball slams, this slideless version comes off as more introspective. Because, except for leaving a blowing gap for saxophone, Bell’s guitar instead sheds a continuous stream of jagged, fretted teardrops. But, then again, neither did Stevie Ray bottleneck it during the sessions which resulted in 1984’s Couldn’t Stand the Weather.

Sounding more and more like his late uncle and bottlenecking role model J.B. Hutto, Lil’ Ed Williams busts down the door with “If You Change Your Mind,” punctuating his lyric phrases about rethinking matters with deep gashes down the strings. It’s a much-welcomed sighting of the fez-topped fireball, whose barroom bark and rowdier slide guitar have gone silent since 2016’s The Big Sound Of Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials. “Reconsider Baby” likewise sticks with reevaluating situations. Caramel-throated Benny Turner makes the ideal cruiser to convey its devil-may-care attitude. The moody guitar solo also stands out as a reminder that the blues is indeed a feeling, where fast licksmanship and high, screaming notes aren’t always the bluest.

There is plenty of work around here for horns, too. The saxy ballad “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” gets vocalist Kam Franklin wagging a cautionary finger. As if the mudslide voice of Big Bill Morganfield, Muddy’s son, needs any help shaking down songs, twin saxes openly flex their muscle behind the pendulum swing to “Just Like a Bird Without a Feather.” Yet Ruthie Foster draws the fullest crew, a five-piece horn section to finesse “Lead Me On” with refined strength. That said, guitarist Doyle Bramhall II (whose father, in addition to drumming with the Vaughan brothers’ early bands, co-wrote “Dirty Pool”) passes on any brass whatsoever, avoiding the chance to gussy up his gutter crawl through “Bad Boy.”

Even the accompanists come with clout: fretsmen Derek O’Brien (Antone’s longtime house guitarist), Charlie Sexton and Anson Funderburgh; pianist Marcia Ball; harpist Steve Bell (Carey’s other son); saxophonists Kaz Kazanoff and Joe Sublett; drummers Kenny “Beedy Eyes” Smith and Rodd Bland (Bobby “Blue” Bland’s son).

And as did Jimmie Vaughan earlier in the album, so do the Kim Wilson-led Fabulous Thunderbirds return “home.” “Talkin’ ’Bout My Friends” lets them do what they’ve done best since 1974. That is, hybridizing blues with whatever strikes their fancy. In this case: slinky, rubberized funk that expands and contracts on a central, boogaloo lick hooked around everything that Johnny Moeller’s stinger of a guitar, Bob Welsh’s frothy organ and Wilson’s “singing” harp do.

However, the final word gets saved for Miss Lavelle White. At 96, she carries the esteem of being the last living recording artist who was part of the almighty Duke-Peacock conglomeration, the Houston-headquartered label for early Bobby Bland, Junior Parker and Big Mama Thornton. Her profoundly heartfelt “Message” softly turns off the lights at the close of quite the grand party honoring the hallowed Austin ground that is Antone’s.

Amazingly, everything here—the entire walloping hour—was cut to tape … live. Just the way Nature intended for the blues.

Still craving more? Antone’s: 50 Years of the Blues is the full-strength answer: a 41-track box set of rare, out-of-print, and newly unearthed live and studio recordings from the Antone's archives that includes The Last Real Texas Blues Album as part of its five discs.

Label: Antone’s/New West Records

Release date: 8/22/25

Label websites: Antone's Record Shop.com New West Records.com

Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski