Album Notes

In his current CD release Five Long Years, blues artist E pays tribute to Carey Bell with a selection of traditional blues songs that include such classics as Short Dress Woman and Five Long Years. Just as Bell injected his own vitality, melody and signature style into these songs, so E has reinterpreted them in his own inimitable way, stripping them of any excess baggage and delivering them back to us, showcasing their true magnificence.

Memories of E’s college days in Chicago and hanging out on Maxwell Street came flooding back to him when he first heard the “chopped” sounds of Bell’s harmonica about twenty-five years ago. “Maxwell Street was a regular Saturday hangout for college kids,” E says. “It had the flavor of a street fair and circus with shops, clothing stores, eating places, and such, and on the corner of Halsted and Maxwell Streets was an open air grill that served the most decadent "Polish sausages" you could ever imagine... grilled onions that should have been against the law… This was also the favorite place of Carey Bell, where he played with the likes of Little Walter Jacobs and Big Walter Horton. His music and the memory of him came back to me as if it were yesterday... I just didn't know who he was at the time, but the sound was unmistakable...When I got back to my music this last time, I promised myself that I would do some of the songs that Carey Bell had made popular... just to tell him in my own spiritual way that I remember you on Maxwell Street and if I ever get the chance, I'll buy you a Polish sausage with onions... that's it... no more, no less...”