Sit Down Baby!

"Sit Down Baby" has recorded a CD of real Mississippi and southern style
blues here in their first release. The authentic juke joint vibe is everywhere
with twists and turns down dark roads and back alley gin mills. The raw grit
and sound of the combo reminds me of Houston Stackhouse with Peck Curtis,
it's the kind of sound you just can't learn in school. They jump and swing and
groove in a way that makes you wonder if they'll make the next
hairpin turn without self-destructing yet always pull it off without
a crash. A fun ride indeed!
Duke Robillard - Sit Down Baby! CD 2009

Sit Down Baby: Masters of interpretation
[in the groove] G.W. Mercure
No artist would recreate, stroke for stroke, a painting created first by another artist. No writer in his right mind would copy, word for word, another author’s novel. Yet the debate remains about the validity of the “cover band,” playing popular songs that have already been immortalized. Their merit has always rested on whether they interpretthose works or simply recite them, and how well. On their eponymous debut, Providence’s Sit Down Baby have mastered the ways in which compelling music forms can be interpreted, reinterpreted, and honored. This is the blues, transplanted from Clarksdale, Mississippi to Chicago, Illinois and filtered back through all the toys Sam Phillips had in Memphis, Tennessee. A number of songs here originated with Chicagodwelling deep-south transplants, like Big Bill Broonzy, Little Walter, and Tampa Red.
The disc’s opener, “Stop It,” an original composition by David Roscoe Tippett, is straight Sun Records, with the slap-back reverb removed. They move further south for their gin-soaked take on Blind Willie McTell’s Piedmont blues.
“Searching the Desert for the
Blues” is McTell’s classic ramble on infidelity, and the original bears a number of spoken interludes by a female part, Ruby Glaze. Sit Down Baby has left those out
in favor of open space, letting those spaces linger open just long enough for singer-guitarist Mark Milloff to spill into them. Bob Dylan was right: nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell. But you have to wonder why McTell couldn’t come up with an arrangement like this.
“Chicago Bound” is from Jimmy Rogers. (Not to be confused with Jimmie Rodgers, the country pioneer.) They like to slow things down, here nearly to a waltz, and let drummer Richard LaGuardia build into the songs an energy that is not frenetic but concentrated.
After that, every vocal effect, every guitar flourish, seems natural, spontaneous.
That’s no yodel you’re hearing out of Milloff, while his slide guitar slithers all over every bend in the road from Georgia to Chicago.
Lowell Fulson’s ubiquitous “Reconsider Baby” is re-imagined by Tippett as a jazz standard that wouldn’t be out of place in a Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday set.
They fear no challenge, and putting together dynamic arrangements for “Reconsider Baby” and “Baby Please Don’t Go” is no small feat. The Big Joe Williams tune has been covered by everyone from Muddy Waters to AC/DC, but not quite like this: Milloff turns from hound-dog to drunken poet and back again. A gently fuzzed lead guitar and some subtle drum stops give texture to well-trod territory.
There’s nothing like a band secure enough to save the best for last and Bukka White’s “Jitterbug Swing” is a blast. Milloff’s slide guitar and Tippett’s syncopated strum hops and pops and stings behind a groovy howl while LaGuardia and bassist Harry Milloff nearly drive the whole rig off the side of the road.
What Sit Down Baby does is very immediate, and you can just about hear them chafing at the studio walls on some tunes, such as the Milloff composition, “Last Night I Drank Too Much.” (There wasn’t already a blues song called “Last Night I Drank Too Much?” Who knew?) But on the blues material here the surprises are ceaseless.
They’re something to behold live and they’re playing regularly at Tazza Caffe these days.
Learn more about Sit Down Baby by visiting their MySpace page, www.myspace.com/sitdownbaby.
- Motif Magazine