February 1980! Among the shelves of the warehouse at Van Dam Hospital in Rotterdam, my day job at the time, I heard… or so I thought for a moment, Little Walter blaring from the radio! No!!!…. that can’t be… Little Walter? On the radio!!?? With a short sprint, I was just in time to hear the announcement, memorising the name the Fabulous Thunderbirds! I also heard “Saturday the 28th at Exit”! There, they completely surprised, astonished and overwhelmed every die-hard Blues fan in attendance. As far as I (and many others) were concerned, it was the beginning of a new Blues boom that would last well into the 1990s. “Girls Go Wild”, copy 1, was then played to death (it almost cost me my relationship! Lol!) and was followed within a few months by copy no. 2!!
So why is this record so good?!
Apart from the instrumental mastery and profound stylistic knowledge of the main players, the fantastic Old School sound (Bob Sullivan), the idiosyncratic choice of repertoire and the quality of the original songs are, in my opinion, completely at odds with everything that had been produced by (white) blues musicians before. In particular, the so-called harp-driven blues (think Little Walter, etc.) had rarely been heard before! Obscure (old school). “Louisiana Swamp Pop” and “Texas Blues”, all played “with an attitude”, made this record a blueprint for a new generation of blues musicians, who mainly went back to the originators for their inspiration! After roughly half a century, it is still a wonderful record, for me in the list of classics such as “Live at the Regal”, “Hoodoo Man Blues”, etc., which has more than stood the test of time.