Johnny Nicholas – Thrill On The Hill (Topcat Records).

Thrill On The Hill is Topcat’s 2005 re-release of Antone’s 1994 album and the move to CD has given it a fresh breath of life. This live album opens with Robert Johnson’s Kind Hearted Woman and Nicholas keeps true to the original but adds harp for a great live sound. House Cleaning Blues is another in the Delta blues style, this time with guitar and piano only. The first of Nicholas’ original songs is My Rice Ain’t Got No Gravy. This is more upbeat than its predecessors and slips into the rhythm & blues that Nicholas plays so well. Prince Charming (now we know where Adam Ant got the title) is a night club blues but very good nonetheless and the piano is superb. He returns to electric blues for the standard 12 bar of Blue & Lonesome before turning to the mandolin for, surprisingly enough, Mandolin Boogie. The introduction of this instrument adds a bluegrass fell to a top class boogie. Son House’s John The Revelator is given the Johnny Nicholas treatment and when singing a capella you have to do it very well – he, and his backing singers passed the test.

Nicholas shows that he can produce good adaptations of older songs and Johnny Young’s Sleeping With The Devil is a case in point. This rolling, swinging blues with its lung bursting harmonica breaks is excellent and shines out on an album of dazzling songs. I don’t know what it is about Cajun music but whenever I hear a song in that style I just can’t stop moving. The latest song to move me is Let’s Go To Big Houston and I’ve been whistling this for days. Another song, another style and Johnny goes all Jazzy on us for Tomorrow Night. It has some lovely piano work but this slow offering provides little else. The closing track on the original album was Johnny’s Deathray Boogie/Thrill On The Hill and the breakneck piano gets the crowd going again as it builds up to a piano duet towards the end.

Topcat have added four bonus tracks to augment the original eleven. There’s two of Johnny’s and two of Robert Johnson’s. Mandolin Moan is slow, slow blues but the mandolin still has that novelty value and gains it pass marks for that alone. Nicholas’ version of Stones In My Pathway is slightly different from the original but its cleaner sound is good in its own way. His slide guitar is excellent on this song that is seldom covered, probably because it is one of the more difficult Johnson songs to play. The last original song is the punchy guitar instrumental, Thinkin’ Bout Junior and the final track is a great version of Phonograph Blues. The best way to play Robert Johnson songs is to keep it plain and simple and that is exactly what Nicholas does here. In doing so he keeps the audience in the palm of his hands and that’s about the best accolade a live album can achieve.

www.topcatrecords.com

David Blue.