Album Notes

Steve Mann’s most beloved album is now available on CD.
Recorded in 1967 direct from the sound system onto a small tape recorder on a table at the Ash Grove music club, this live performance album has been selling for increasingly higher prices each year as it gets rarer and harder to find. Frustrated aficionados unable to keep up with the now extinct item, rarely found on Ebay, can at last claim the performance for their own on CD, better than ever, and with extra information in the liner notes.

The original producer, Rick Smith, working with engineer John Lyon found and sampled a safety copy of the recording master, which was then remastered at Bay Records in Berkeley. Rick himself contributes an anecdotal reminiscence of his experiences with Steve Mann in the 60s in Los Angeles that is truly a window into the life and times of this gentle and talented artist. Steve disappeared from the scene for some forty years until resurfacing in 2003 in Berkeley California, where Bella Roma Music put up a WEB SITE of him and issued “Steve Mann Alive and Pickin’” assembled from tracks sent in by friends around the country. This second CD is due to his loyal fans\' many emailed requests.

The Ash Grove CD tray card quote from Elijah Wald, blues scholar, author and performer, reads as follows:

Of all the young guitarists who turned to the blues tradition in the 1960’s, none was more brilliant and innovative than Steve Mann. His few LP’s are treasured rarities, but none was rarer or more treasured than this live recording, a performance that is as passionate and soulful as it is technically astonishing.