You have to love a guy who puts his life out there for the world to chew on, especially if he’s a bluesman, and Little Freddie King, hailed on the jewel case as “one of the last great country-blues players,” is certainly that. That same cover also mentions his neighborhood (Treme, looks like), means of transportation (old bicycle), and home life (“domineering wife”).

Get the picture? You can practically smell the Chinese food and chicken coming from Chun King on the back cover photo, and it’s all over the grooves of this live set, recorded at the fabulous Dream Palace.

It ain’t pretty, what with everyone seemingly out of tune, but damned if it don’t sound real, as King’s fantastically sleazy pawn-shop leads drip all over songs like the title cut (an off-the-cuff jam, I’d bet) like cheap grease and cigar smoke. Everything he wants to tell you comes out in that sound: titles like “Bad Chicken”, “Hobo Blues” and “Bucket Of Blood” are merely signposts on the road to wino hell and blues heaven, although there IS a story to the latter, he doesn’t quite get to it. Government labeling laws require me to tell you that the slop-bucket wheeze put out on his cover of King Curtis’ “Soul Twist” is potent enough to turn George W. Bush into the Godfather of Soul. It’s THAT country, and that ghetto. Your friends down at the swap meet are gonna be all over this one.