The Cafe au Go Go was a basement club, owned by
Howard Solomon, on Bleecker Street in New York's Greenwich Village that featured folk, blues, jazz, and rock acts from 1964 until it closed its doors in 1969. This set, recorded in November of 1965, features two rediscovered country blues legends,
Bukka White and
Skip James, both of whom, unlike
Son House and some of the other old blues players rediscovered by the folk and blues revival, still had their singing and guitar-playing skills intact.
White, who preferred to be called Booker rather than Bukka, plays his resonator guitar and sings with a raspy roar while
James stands at the polar opposite, singing in a delicately high voice with a delicate guitar style to match. It's a nice archival set featuring two of the old country blues' most unique performers. One quibble, though, is that the song "Roadhouse Blues" is attributed to
James, when it's clearly
White singing and playing it. ~ Steve Leggett