Eugene Rhodes – Talkin’ About My Time (1963/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:04 minutes | 314 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Folk-Legacy Records
If there is a more obscure country blues artist than this fellow, then he is probably locked up somewhere, as well, one hastens to add, because that was the situation when blues scholar Bruce Jackson first discovered Eugene Rhodes. He was doing a ten- to 25-year stretch at the Indiana State Prison, which was where a remarkable album was recorded of 15 songs and a little talking that was eventually released on a label even more obscure than the bluesman, if such a thing is possible. By the time Rhodes was discovered, he seemed like he was in his late 50s and apparently nervously dispaired “them old alley blues” that nobody wanted to hear anymore now that all the public wanted was jazz. His opinions as expressed to his recording producer do well in indicating his cultural isolation as a prisoner, because he was apparently unaware of the huge white audience for country blues that existed in the ’60s, a time when an elderly black gent with a slide on his finger would be considered “cool,” although it is unsure whether that judgment would extend all the way to the tough-looking prisoner pictured in grimy black and white on the cover of his album Talkin’ ‘Bout My Time.
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