Photo Credit: Paul Natkin
Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials
It would be enough for some blues guitarists to sell a crowd on their dazzling virtuosity. There is certainly compelling value in that for the music’s hardcore aficionados. But Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials go beyond providing exquisite musicianship, excelling as entertainers as well.
That is in great part to lead singer/guitarist Lil’ Ed Williams being such a charismatic character. With a smile bright enough to top a lighthouse, even during some of the band’s most dolorous ditties, Friday night at Shank Hall he coupled his occasional dance moves with bright-eyed showmanship that recalled Louis Armstrong at his most jovial. The overall effect was an irresistibly effervescent life force, drawing the audience into blues’ transformative power of turning sorrow into joy.
All that extra-musical charm is no distraction from his prodigious primary talents, though. On hollow- and solid-body guitars, Williams is an amiably menacing slide player, bending strings, softly strumming on his guitar’s bridge and furiously shredding with an open palm. Abetting and sometimes trading off with Williams for lead runs, Mike Garrett evinced a bit of fuzz in his tone to licks that skirted the peripheries of rockabilly, Chuck Berry’s rocking country fusion and deeper electric blues. Williams’ half-brother James “Pookie” Young contrasted the rest of the frontline as he played his bass at a high angle in seated repose, drawing no attention to himself apart from the unobtrusive foundation he provided.
Williams’ and Garrett’s vocal styles offered even greater contrast than their instrumental approaches did. Whether refreshing his genre’s tropes comparing romance and its physical counterpart to car maintenance and bees’ business in honey, warning of biblical apocalypse, honoring a request for one of his quartet’s several songs about food (“Icicles In My Meatloaf”), or simply bemoaning love gone wrong, Williams’ near-constant smile didn’t diminish his mellifluous, raw-throated sincerity. On the two of the night’s 23 songs that found Garrett as leader, he showcased a less wild, more tightly controlled instrument with a burnished quality complementing the band leader’s looser vibe.
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Drawing about as little attention to his effectiveness as Young did with his bass, drummer Kelly Littleton rode the night’s varieties of rhythms with minimal fills and maximal power. It’s probable he worked up the greatest sweat of the foursome, but—save for the break between the Imperials’ two sets—Littleton likely barely had time to wipe his perspiration.
No opening act preceded Lil’ Ed and his band’s fierce house rocking. And it’s doubtful anyone could have given them serious competition for blues entertainment value.
