If Walls Could Talk (1970)

Someone somewhere praised this album by Little Milton (his fourth) so highly and so ardently, with words to the effect it saved their life or some such, that I didn’t hesitate to add it to my get-to list, assuming it was some blues masterpiece from the ‘60s/’70s period and I would learn more about its claim to fame when I got to it. But now that I’m here the album seems to be remarkably obscure and I have no idea who wrote that piece. If Walls Could Talk does not yet rate its own Wikipedia article, and when I turned to Discogs I found out not even a lot of the session players are known. The cover design varies across releases, though generally based on the same few images. On at least one of those covers Gene Barge gets high-profile credit for “orchestra arranged and conducted by.” To me, “orchestra” means strings, which I don’t hear, so I’m assuming Barge did the horn charts and directed these mostly unnamed session players. Even the track sequencing at Napster is scrambled from the vinyl version shown at Discogs. Whatever is going on here, whoever is responsible beyond singer and guitar-player Little Milton, it is good stuff—really good. The band assembled is on the sunny side of perfect, both for Little Milton and for the material. Barge’s work pulls it all together seamlessly. Little Milton is a great guitar player, fitting in neatly with the horns and cutting loose with tidy rave-ups and solos. One of the few sidemen named is Donny Hathaway, who sits in on “Let’s Get Together,” an ode and plea to an ex written by Morris Dollison that is at once pathetic, touching, and creepy. “Blues Get Off My Shoulder,” a Bobby Parker song and another high point, is bruised and moody and so good. The title song by Bobby Miller is a pretty good choogle, with some nice organ lines from Barge’s anonymous player. “Kansas City” has become an R&B standard, here rendered proficiently with an Otis Redding gloss. I’m no expert on the blues but I can see where Little Milton may be accounted second-tier—arguably, Bobby Bland or Redding is the better singer in this soul-tinged style and Little Milton is only one of many contemporary blues guitarists. On the other hand, this is another album that keeps sounding better the more I play it. If I stick with it long enough it might save my life. In short, recommended.