Charlie Mussellwhite
Waterfront Blues Festival
Tom McCall Waterfront Park
Portland, OR.
July 1, 2005

Recorded from KBOO FM, a local all volunteer radio station. There is some inherent reception problems scattered throughout these recordings. The station is not very powerful and the team had some problems on the first day of the festival getting everything "plugged in". All in all some great music with a few tolerable "blurps".

FM > MD > HDD > CDWav (for splitting) > FLAC

No set lists or art. Hope you all enjoy the shows....twofthrs.


Charlie Musselwhite

"A venerated blues harmonica elder at his creative peak…his approach is imaginative and stunning…utterly convincing."
-Chicago Tribune

"With unabashed excellence, Charlie Musselwhite and his tight band set the standard for blues bands everywhere."
-Rolling Stone

Some musicians become blues players by choice, some are simply born into it. Harmonica master Charlie Musselwhite's life story reads like a classic blues legend, with roots in the blues heartland of Mississippi and Memphis followed by a migration to Chicago, the birthplace of modern electric blues. His recordings—two dozen solo albums for many labels spanning almost 40 years—have become classics, and his live shows continue to amaze fans around the world. Like the greatest bluesmen before him, Musselwhite has added his own signature to the music. Over the course of his career, he's introduced jazz stylings, Cuban rhythms and a contemporary world-view into his vision of the blues.

Musselwhite's lengthy resume—which, in addition to his solo projects includes guest tracks on recordings by Bonnie Raittt, the Blind Boys of Alabama, John Lee Hooker, Tom Waits and INXS; 14 W.C. Handy awards and six Grammy nominations; and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Monterey Blues Festival—Charlie Musselwhite is firmly entrenched in musical history.

Charlie continues building on his musical legacy with his latest release, Sanctuary, on Real World Records. On Sanctuary, Charlie explores the themes that have always charged the potency of the blues: loneliness, despair, evil and dying. The CD contains both originals and tunes by such artists as Ben Harper, Townes Van Zandt, and Randy Newman. Guests on the CD include Ben Harper, Charlie Sexton and The Blind Boys of Alabama. The Chicago Sun-Times calls Sanctuary "spellbinding, haunting music that cries out to be heard" and The San Jose Mercury News notes the CD is "the possible blues album of the year."

That recording helped Musselwhite this spring win a handful of Handy Awards, the blues world's Grammy: Best Harmonica, Contemporary Blues Artist of the Year, and Contemporary Blues Album of the Year.

Alligator Records has also recently released Deluxe Edition, featuring highlights from three critically acclaimed albums for Alligator Records during the 1990s.