1 	Let The Good Times Roll		3:34
2 	Kitchen Man		3:15
3 	Sparrow		6:30
4 	How Blue Can You Get?		5:01
5 	Baby What You Want Me To Do		5:36
6 	IYANNATTA - (Trouble In Mind)	3:01
7 	Whole Lot Of Shakin' Going On	6:57
8 	Got What It Takes - (Stingy Ginny) 	2:52
9 	Steal Away		5:49
10 	Fool For You	5:09
11 	Wasted Life Blues	5:24

Alto Saxophone – Michael Peavey
Bass – Nick Charles
Drums – Brady Williams
Guitar – Carlos Johnson, Rico McFarland
Harmonica [Harp] – Chicago Beau
Keyboards – John Christy
Piano, Organ [Hammond B3] – Fred Rakstraw
Trombone – Johnny Cotton
Trumpet – Boney Fields
Vocals, Piano – Valerie Wellington

Life In The Big City CD music contains a single disc with 11 songs. Want to hear the late Chicago belter warble "Trouble in Mind" in Japanese? That's the strongest track on her last disc, but much of the set is pretty mundane. ---Bill Dahl, allmusic.com

Opera diva, actress, blues belter—Valerie Wellington tackled all three roles successfully while still in her 20s. After three years of studying the classics at the American Conservatory of Music, Valerie burst onto the Chicago blues scene, unleashing her roof-raising pipes on the blues scene in the summer of 1982 and snaring the role of Ma Rainey in a local stage play. Her rise was nothing short of meteoric, boosted by her 1984 Rooster debut album, Million Dollar Secret. A pair of very popular television commercials for the Chicago Tribune, aired on national superstation WGN-TV, plus a concert broadcast on National Public Radio, introduced this powerhouse singer to a nationwide audience.

Wellington’s full-bodied sound combined the influence of contemporary singers like Ray Charles and Koko Taylor with the classic styles of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. In fact, she was one of the few younger blues women to regularly feature songs from the 1920s in her dynamic live show.

Valerie showed the promise of becoming a true blues superstar, but the blues world was sadly robbed of her talent when she died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 33, in 1992. ---alligator.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire uloz.to cloudmailru gett

back

    1 Down in the Dumps (2:52)
    2 Million Dollar Secret (4:03)
    3 Independent Blues (2:47)
    4 Cold, Cold Feeling (5:25)
    5 Smokestack Lightning (3:38)
    6 Dirty No-Gooder's Blues (3:56)
    7 My Baby Treats Me Like a Stepchild (3:52)
    8 You Can't Have My Monkey (2:50)
    9 Bad Avenue (4:33)
    10 Love Don't Love Nobody (2:27)
    11 Wild About You (3:04)
    12 Voodoo Blues (5:26)

Personnel:
Valerie Wellington (Piano), (Vocals)
Nate Applewhite (Drums)
Casey Jones (Drums), (Vocals)
John Littlejohn (Slide Guitar)
Magic Slim (Guitar), (Vocals)
John Primer (Guitar), (Vocals)
Aron Burton (Bass), (Vocals)
Nick Holt (Bass)
Billy Branch (Harmonica)
Sunnyland Slim (Piano)

Valerie Wellington took the Chicago blues scene by surprise in 1982, perhaps not forgoing her classical training as an opera singer as much as using it to enhance her work in the blues. As a blueswoman she fit right in, not only becoming a regular in the blues clubs but also compiling an impressive theatrical resume for her portrayals of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith -- women who, like opera singers, learned to project their voices without microphones. The influence of Koko Taylor was also evident in Wellington's blues approach, which combined classic vaudeville-era blues with hard-driving Chicago sounds. Her power-packed voice was heard on only a few record releases but was featured frequently in TV and radio commercials. Valerie Wellington was only 33 years old when she died of a brain aneurysm. ---Jim O’Neal, Rovi

download:   uploaded 4shared mediafire ziddu divshare gett

back