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Son Seals @ Healy's in Toronto Feb 22 and 23


Rossolee

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Son Seals is a Chicago legend. I saw him at Buddy Guy's for 10 bucks last summer. That's 10 bucks! He's very influential and he's a lot more than "Funky Bitch". A lot of Phishheads think Phish wrote the song. I'll be there on the 23rd, maybe even on the 22nd too. Here's a little Son Seals biography from the All Music Guide:

It all started with a phone call from Wesley Race, who was at the Flamingo Club on Chicago's South Side, to Alligator Records owner Bruce Iglauer. Race was raving about a new find, a young guitarist named Son Seals. He held the phone in the direction of the bandstand, so Iglauer could get an on-site report. It didn't take long for Iglauer to scramble into action. Alligator issued Seals's 1973 eponymous debut album, which was followed by six more.

Son Seals, born Frank Seals, was born into the blues. His dad operated a juke joint called the Dipsy Doodle Club in Osceola, AR, where Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Nighthawk, and Albert King cavorted up front while little Frank listened intently in back. Drums were the youth's first instrument; he played them behind Nighthawk at age 13. But by the time he was 18, Son Seals turned his talents to guitar, fronting his own band in Little Rock.

While visiting his sister in Chicago, he hooked up with Earl Hooker's Roadmasters in 1963 for a few months, and there was a 1966 stint with Albert King that sent him behind the drumkit once more. But with the death of his father in 1971, Seals returned to Chicago, this time for good. When Alligator signed him up, his days fronting a band at the Flamingo Club and the Expressway Lounge were numbered.

Seals's jagged, uncompromising guitar riffs and gruff vocals were showcased very effectively on that 1973 debut set, which contained his "Your Love Is like a Cancer" and a raging instrumental called "Hot Sauce." Midnight Son, his 1976 encore, was by comparison a much slicker affair, with tight horns, funkier grooves, and a set list that included "Telephone Angel" and "On My Knees." Seals cut a live LP in 1978 at Wise Fools Pub; another studio concoction, Chicago Fire, in 1980, and a solid set in 1984, Bad Axe, before having a disagreement with Iglauer that that was patched up in 1991 with the release of his sixth Alligator set, Living in the Danger Zone. Nothing but the Truth followed in 1994, sporting some of the worst cover art in CD history but a stinging lineup of songs inside. Another live recording was planned for June of 1996 at Buddy Guy's Legends.

Seals prefers to remain close to his Chicago home these days, holding his touring itinerary to an absolute minimum. That means that virtually every weekend he can be found somewhere on the North side blues circuit, dishing up his raw-edged brand of bad blues axe to local followers. — Bill Dahl

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