Lou Mac - Take Your Troubles To A Friend / Move Me (Digital 45)

Certainly one of the greatest voices in the Chicago R&B scene of the mid to late 1950s, Lou McClinton, professionally known as Lou Mac, recorded some great sides for the Windy City Parrot Records subsidiary Blue Lake. The material she recorded, some written by herself, was consistently top-notch, and the musicians that backed her up on those sessions were certainly the cream of the crop. On her superb 1956 single, "Take Your Troubles To A Friend" b/w "Move Me," she is backed by the highly influential bandleader Red Saunders group which was buoyed by the great Paul Bascomb on tenor sax, and Riley Hampton on alto. Although the electric guitar player on the session is unidentified, it may have been the great Jody Williams. The rest of the band is identified as George "Sonny" Cohn (trumpet); McKinley Easton (baritone sax); Earl Washington (piano); Jimmy Richards (bass) and Saunders (drums). Both sides of the single featured top notch songwriting - the "B" side, a deep blues titled "Move Me," was written for Lou by none other than Willie Dixon. Original shellac or vinyl copies of this release are extremely rare and sell for hundreds of dollars when they appear on collector's sites. Now these two greats are finally available in the digital domain restored and remastered.