Charlie Musselwhite - Look Out Highway (2025)

Posted By: popsakov

Date: June 7, 2025

Charlie Musselwhite is an American icon. His story is entangled in the story of America, and he's been tracing it's highways and entertaining it's audiences, and those abroad, for nearly six decades. So, it's fitting that his new record, is entitled Look Out Highway, and it's remarkable that a man who has spent more days on the road than off still brings such spirit and passion to the music and the lifestyle. Throughout his illustrious career Charlie Musselwhite has received 13 Grammy nominations and 33 Blues Music Awards. In 2014 his collaboration with Ben Harper Get Up won a Grammy and in 2010 he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. In 2023, Musselwhite was cast in Martin Scorsese's film Killers of the Flower Moon. Charlie has collaborated with an eclectic list of incredible artists over the years, including Ben Harper, Cyndi Lauper, Eddie Vedder, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Gov't Mule, INXS, George Thorogood, Eliades Ochoa, Cat Stevens, Elvin Bishop and John Lee Hooker. More than any other harmonica player of his generation, Charlie Musselwhite can rightfully lay claim to inheriting the mantle of many of the great harp players that came before him with music as dark as Mississippi mud and as uplifting as the blue skies of California. In an era when the term legendary gets applied to auto-tuned pop stars, this singular blues harp player, singer, songwriter, and guitarist has earned and deserves to be honored as a true master of American classic vernacular music.

Charlie Musselwhite released the acoustic Mississippi Son in 2022; it was a towering achievement in a career full of them. It took home a Blues Music Award for Best Acoustic Blues Album. In 2023, he and Dynatones released the rowdy, undernoted Curtain Call. That year Musselwhite also played the role of Alvin Reynolds in Martin Scorsese's epic Killers of the Flower Moon.

Musselwhite's Look Out Highway marks the very first time in his long career that he's used his touring band in the studio. He, guitarist Matt Stubbs, drummer June Core, bassist Randy Burmudes, and Kid Andersen on piano and Hammond B-3 recorded the set at Andersen's Greaseland Studio in San Jose, California as well as in Musselwhite's new home in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Andersen engineered the set and assisted co-producers Henrietta "Henri" Musselwhite – Charlie's spouse, manager, and constant companion – and Gary Vincent.

He composed the opening title track from an earworm gospel lick he'd been carrying around a while. His wailing harp meets dirty, distorted electric guitars, a clattering kick drum, and snare. His signature vocal is high, lonesome, and weary but still defiant. "Sad Eyes" is a snarling midtempo ballad. Next to a pumping piano and greasy, gritty electric guitar, Musselwhite rides a choogling blues-rock groove into an electric blues hypnosis session. His harp underscores the protagonist's amorous intentions with a killer, moaning solo. "Storm Warning" is pure juke-joint strut. The band sound like they're onstage as their exuberant boss grabs the reins and drives them hard. Other highlights include the raw, infectious shuffle of "Highway 61." Many of these songs are autobiographical and are woven into an iconic blues vocabulary that melds traditions from the Delta, Memphis, Chicago, and the West Coast. On "Baby Won’t You Please Help Me," he delivers the chorus, "I was born in Mississippi/I was raised in Tennessee/Seems like every place I've been/The blues keep trailing me…," in a revved-up shuffle with Stubbs' guitar swaggering atop Andersen's wooly piano. Singer/songwriter Edna Nicole Luckett performs a righteous duet with Musselwhite on the swaggering "Waitin' for Times to Get Better." The spine-slipping juke-joint instrumental "Blue Lounge" walks the line between the street and the lounge with narcotic slide guitars and a harmonica wail that moans like a midnight train whistle. Musselwhite growls about being haunted on "Ghosts of Memphis" with a guest spot from Memphis hip-hop star Al Kapone rapping across a snaky guitar-and-organ chug. Closer "Open Road" sees Andersen doubling on piano and guitar in a roadhouse shuffle buoyed by a bumping bass in a nearly laconic vocal and a harp solo that swings, swoops, and dives. Look Out Highway, like Mississippi Son before it, reveals the artist as a hungry creator, pushing the blues harder into the 21st century while retaining its traditions and repurposing them in new ways. Quite literally, at 81, Musselwhite has never sounded stronger or better. Let's hope he brings this band back into the studio – and soon.

~ Thom Jurek, All Music

Discogs

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Track List:

01. Look Out Highway [3:32]
02. Sad Eyes [3:40]
03. Storm Warning [4:05]
04. Baby, Won't You Please Help Me [3:45]
05. Hip Shakin' Mama [3:06]
06. Highway 61 [3:45]
07. Ready for Times to Get Better [3:16]
08. Ramblin' Is My Game [3:49]
09. Blue Lounge [3:43]
10. Ghosts in Memphis [3:51]
11. Open Road [3:31]

EAC Log

Exact Audio Copy V1.8 from 15. July 2024

EAC extraction logfile from 4. June 2025, 18:24

Charlie Musselwhite / Look Out Highway

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Track 1

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Track 11

Filename C:\EAC\Charlie Musselwhite - Look Out Highway (2025) [CD FLAC] {FBR 046}\11 - Charlie Musselwhite - Open Road.wav

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==== Log checksum E55D9F501C57F890BCE3D4966FCE574FF1B6EF9831C18F03D6015A9477918A75 ====

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