When Women Played Rock And Roll For Keeps- The Music Of Bonnie Raiit

CD Review

By Zack James

Seth Garth and Jack Callahan who had been friends since highs school down in Carver after they returned from a whirlwind few months on the road on a magical mystery tour yellow brick road merry pranksters adventure out in California were sitting in Jack’s, the local hang-out bar in Cambridge where the drinks were cheap and the conversation interesting, when a young woman stepped up to the small stage preparing to sing. Jack mentioned to Seth that she looked familiar, that flaming red hair a giveaway, and asked him if he could place the face. Seth who was beginning his long career as a music critic just then for The Eye whom he had contracted with when he was out in California blurted out that didn’t Jack remember seeing her, seeing Bonnie Raitt, on the Boston Common before they had taken off for California where she blew away the crowd with a cover of Down Highway 61. Jack laughed and said that he was so stoned that night that he wasn’t sure who he had heard (Seth reminding him that it had been an afternoon concert.                     

Of course Seth as a budding music critic, expecting to ride the wave from folk to folk rock to what was now being called “acid” rock with all the strobe lights and dipping into the drug bag to bring out the right mood had done some basic research on Bonnie as an up and coming star who was riding her own wave of the new trend in having female singers lead the bands they were in. Grace Slick, Amy Kline, Nicky Adams and then her. He had also found out that Bonnie had dropped out of Radcliffe a little earlier in order to pursue her musical career as a result of the success of the Boston Common concert. He also had found out that her budding virtuosity with the slide guitar had come from sitting at the feet of country blues legend Mississippi Fred McDowell. So she had a pedigree. Still she a was only starting out and grateful that Jack’s had allowed her up on the stage a couple of years earlier where she had begun to hone her skills both at presenting a professional musical veneer and connecting with the audience. So the night Seth and Jack were sitting there at the bar drinking and talking about everything under the sun Bonnie was doing “pay back.” Performing for the old crowd, performing for Jack, the owner (Jack Callahan too as she keep sliding her eyes rung bar wise in handsome Jack’s direction).  

She started her first set with Hound Dog Taylor’s The Sky Is Crying and McDowell’s Highway 61 and the rest would be history. A history which is well documented in this compilation from those classics to Richard Thompson’s The Dimming of the Day.