Levon Helm Band Starring Little Sammy Davis - The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume One (2005) CD + DVD

The Levon Helm Band is making more than music in Woodstock, NY nestled in the heart of the Catskill Mountains, they are orchestrating a musical carnival known as The Midnight Ramble. The idea is to recreate, inside Levon Helm Studios, the traveling shows (like F.S. WalcottOs Rabbit Foot Minstrel show) that played in the South where Levon grew up as a boy, embracing the merging musical traditions of the time; blues, gospel, country, rock and roll, bluegrass, rockabilly, soul and jazz. Levon Helm (The Band, R.C.O All-Stars) made a career on stage and screen as a singer, drummer, band leader, writer and actor. He has assembled some of the premiere musicians on the East Coast to take part in the carnival. The room is a unique studio, all wooden (no nails only wooden pegs holding the barnOs towering hemlock beams together) with locally quarried bluestone and the ambiance of a church hall. Guests include: Jonnie Johnson (Chuck Berry), Dr. John, Little Sammy Davis (Earl Hooker, Ike Turner), Jon Smith (The White Trash Horn Section, Edgar and Jonnie Winters), Jimmy Vivino (Max Weinberg Seven, Al Kooper), Larry Campbell (Bob Dylan), Mike Merritt (Max Weinberg Seven), Eric Lawrence, Steven Bernstein, Amy Helm, Glen Patscha, Fiona McBain, Byron Isaacs, Tony Leone, Sean Costello, Andrew Shober, Fred Scribner. The music is soulful and bluesy, layered with rich vocal accompaniment and slick musical arrangements, and grounded by the roots this music grew from. Volume one features the harmonica legend and blues singer Little Sammy Davis at the top of his game. Levon makes his first vocal debut in over ten years on Volume Two after successfully overcoming throat cancer, so it is a real treat for all of the fans who have missed that sweet southern voice.

Levon Helm

In 2004, former Band drummer Levon Helm, eager to get back into playing music on a regular basis after surviving a bout with cancer, began staging a series of small concerts at the recording studio on his estate in Woodstock, New York. Calling the shows "The Midnight Rambles," a different set of guests tagged along once or twice a month while Helm and his cronies played house band, and on October 23, 2004, Helm set up with guitarist Fred Scribner, bassist Michael Merritt, and bluesman Little Sammy Davis on vocals and harmonica. Like the other shows in the Midnight Ramble series, the gig was recorded and videotaped, and The Midnight Ramble Music Sessions, Vol. 1 features 12 songs from that evening. A more accurate billing for this show would have been "Little Sammy Davis with the Levon Helm Band," since Davis is the clear frontman at this show, and Helm, in deference to his throat problems, doesn't contribute any of his trademark vocals (and while his drumming chops are in fine shape, the repertoire has him playing little more than a steady shuffle most of the time). Davis is a good harp player whose style suggests a more laid-back variation on Little Walter, but his vocals have weakened with age, and though there's a relaxed and comfortable mood to this music that befits a house party with friends in attendance, it rarely catches fire the way you wish it would, and this ends up coming off as a guitar pull with some A-list players rather than a soul-satisfying blues session. This ramble was probably a great party, but The Midnight Ramble Music Sessions, Vol. 1 suggests you really had to be there. (The album is packed with a DVD including the same performances that appear on the CD, and while the video is well-shot and edited, it ultimately isn't any more exciting to watch than to hear.)

Review by Mark Deming, Allmusic.com