THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “What do you get when you mix Delta, Chicago and Memphis blues? Charlie Musselwhite. He’s been writing classic songs for nearly six decades. He’s a prolific songwriter who writes organic, compelling stories with ease. There is real emotional depth at the core of his songs.
When asked how he chose the title track for his new album Look Out Highway, Charlie says, “I didn’t pick Look Out Highway… it picked me when I wrote it. Many years ago I was walking by a church in Memphis and I heard a great beat they were using for a song. That beat lived in my head all these years until the lyrics finally came to me.”
More than any other harmonica player of his generation, 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 uplifting as California’s blue skies. 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.
Recorded at Kid Andersen’s Greaseland Studio in San Jose and Clarksdale Sound Stage in Mississippi, it’s the first time Charlie has recorded with his long-time touring band, comprised of guitarist Matt Stubbs (GA-20), drummer June Core (Robert Lockwood Jr.) and bassist Randy Bermudes (James Cotton), along with Andersen, who has been in and out of the band for many years. Their chemistry and command are abundantly clear from the opening notes. “We finished a gig at The Iridium in New York City and flew straight to California to record,” Charlie effuses.
Musselwhite has received 13 Grammy nominations throughout his illustrious career — most recently for his last release Mississippi Son — 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.
Charlie’s career took off soon after he arrived in Chicago in the early ’60s. He was an integral part of the blues renaissance along with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, both genuine proteges of Little Walter, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. In 1967, at just 22 years of age, he released his debut album Stand Back!, which garnered critical acclaim. On a whim, Musselwhite relocated to San Francisco that same year. Contemporaries like Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield followed suit and were welcomed into the counterculture scene around the Fillmore West as authentic purveyors of real-deal blues.
Charlie has also collaborated with an eclectic list of incredible artists over the years, including Cyndi Lauper, Eddie Vedder, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Blind Boys of Alabama, Gov’t Mule, INXS, Mickey Hart and Japan’s Kodo Drummers, George Thorogood, Eliades Ochoa, Cat Stevens, Elvin Bishop and John Lee Hooker, a close friend who was also best man at his wedding. In 2023, Musselwhite was cast in Martin Scorsese’s film Killers Of The Flower Moon.
Musselwhite’s 60-year journey is living proof that great music only gets better with age. Look Out Highway is the latest proof that his depth of expression as a singer and an instrumentalist grow more profound with each passing year.”
