Though he’s often defined by his affinity for NOLA funk and Chicago blues, Eli Paperboy Reed is an East Coast commodity, born and raised in Brookline, Mass. His 2005 debut was recorded 15 minutes away in a basement studio in Boston’s Allston neighborhood. It was tracked live to analog tape in mono and pressed in a limited run of 300 CDs, which Reed sold mostly while busking in Cambridge.
Twenty years later, Yep Roc is releasing a remastered version of Sings Walkin’ And Talkin’ And Other Smash Hits!, available tomorrow on vinyl and CD. The expanded reissue tacks on four unreleased tracks, plus a session recorded for Harvard University’s WHRB radio. The little-heard LP is a rugged snapshot of a reverent young student of the blues on the cusp of finding his own voice.
The reissue’s focus track, “Woman, Woman Blues,” was originally recorded by Delta blues forefather Ishmon Bracey in 1930. “I became sort of obsessed with Bracey—along with his southern Mississippi compatriot, the legendary Tommy Johnson—in my late teens,” says Reed. “I was interested in translating these acoustic country-blues songs into a trio format with an electric guitar because I thought it would sound extremely unique.”
Reed tried the same thing on Johnson’s “Fat Mama Rumble” and “Cool Drink Of Water Blues,” playing guitar and harmonica in a rack. “These songs were a stylistic path that never was for me,” says Reed. “It was a little too esoteric, and I felt it didn’t fit the way I was going. But I still love these songs, and I feel like they came out sounding different than any other electric blues records I could name.”
We’re proud to premiere Eli Paperboy Reed’s “Woman, Woman Blues.”
—Hobart Rowland
