Juicy Lucy - Lie Back And Enjoy It 1970

If Juicy Lucy's debut album ranks among the most haunting, haunted blues-rock albums of the late 1960s, its follow-up only illustrates how damaging the last six months had been for the band. Fully half the band had been replaced, including vocalist Ray Owen and guitarist Neil Hubbard, and with them went much of the evil electrics and swamp-conscious blues that gave Juicy Lucy its most scintillating shivers. The players who replaced them -- former Zoot Money singer Paul Williams, ex-Jeff Beck drummer Rod Coombes, and guitarist Micky Moody -- were no slouches, of course, and the interplay between Glenn Ross Campbell's steel and Chris Mercer's sax is as chilling as ever. But songs like "Built for Comfort," "Thinking of My Life," and even a cover of Frank Zappa's "Willie the Pimp" owe more to a premonition of ZZ Top than a bad dream in the bayou, while the rest of Lie Back and Enjoy It found the group pursuing a distinctly country-rock flavored direction. Even the first-album era "Changed My Mind, Changed My Sign" sounded more like the Dils than Dr. John, and Lie Back and Enjoy It emerged a distinctly unenjoyable disappointment, at least by the standards Juicy Lucy once held so high. AMG.

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Juicy Lucy - Juicy Lucy 1969

If only one song can be said to encapsulate all that Juicy Lucy portended as their career got underway in the new decade of the '70s, it was "Who Do You Love?" The band's first single, spinning off their debut album, was as fast, mean, and dirty as any record could have been, a breakneck tour through the Bayou swamps and dirt-track roads of the American South powered by a razor-sharp guitar that would make your fingers bleed. And it gave the band a U.K. hit that still sounds fresh today. But Juicy Lucy were no one-trick pony. True, their debut album is remembered as much for its artwork (a mostly naked, fruit-draped lady) as for its content, but step inside and the group were locked firmly, and gleefully, into the free-freak movement of the age -- while Chuck Berry's "Nadine" was fed through a Hell's Angels nightclub jukebox, "Are You Satisfied" emerged as a festival chant spread out over six-and-a-half minutes, as mantra-like as (almost) anything the Edgar Broughton Band was doing at the time. The band's American roots are seldom far from the surface, of course: "Mississippi Woman" dripped oozing, cracked, croaky blues, and "Chicago North-Western" essentially offers up a history of the Midwestern railroads, while Glen Ross Campbell's steel guitar breathed Americana over everything it touched. But no matter how powerful Juicy Lucy may have been, it could not paper over the cracks that were already forming in the band themselves, and by the time they recorded their next album, the group that cut this one was already long gone. One can only dream of what they might have achieved had they stuck together. AMG.

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Juicy Lucy - Get A Whiff A This 1971

Juicy Lucy's third album in 18 months, and the third to draw as much attention for its artwork as its contents, would prove to be the band's last. Although a fourth Juicy Lucy album would appear in 1972, not a single founding member was left on board. Get a Whiff of This itself was very much the son of its predecessor, still locked firmly into a country groove (the twanging "Mr. A. Jones," the fast-pickin' "Jessica"), but looking out toward more unexpected pastures. The funky "Big Lil." and the blistering antiwar anthem "Midnight Sun" were both strong inclusions, while a take on the Allmans' "Midnight Rider" remains one of that particular anthem's most dynamic revisions. Despite at least half an album's worth of highlights, however, still there was nothing that really leaped out and grabbed the listener -- and nothing that could ever displace the band's debut from its sacred spot on the turntable, a fate that Glenn Campbell admitted he predicted when he conjured up that most distinctive title. It was his way of saying "the whole thing stinks." AMG.
 

listen here

Juicy Lucy - Juicy Lucy 1969

If only one song can be said to encapsulate all that Juicy Lucy portended as their career got underway in the new decade of the '70s, it was "Who Do You Love?" The band's first single, spinning off their debut album, was as fast, mean, and dirty as any record could have been, a breakneck tour through the Bayou swamps and dirt-track roads of the American South powered by a razor-sharp guitar that would make your fingers bleed. And it gave the band a U.K. hit that still sounds fresh today. But Juicy Lucy were no one-trick pony. True, their debut album is remembered as much for its artwork (a mostly naked, fruit-draped lady) as for its content, but step inside and the group were locked firmly, and gleefully, into the free-freak movement of the age -- while Chuck Berry's "Nadine" was fed through a Hell's Angels nightclub jukebox, "Are You Satisfied" emerged as a festival chant spread out over six-and-a-half minutes, as mantra-like as (almost) anything the Edgar Broughton Band was doing at the time. The band's American roots are seldom far from the surface, of course: "Mississippi Woman" dripped oozing, cracked, croaky blues, and "Chicago North-Western" essentially offers up a history of the Midwestern railroads, while Glen Ross Campbell's steel guitar breathed Americana over everything it touched. But no matter how powerful Juicy Lucy may have been, it could not paper over the cracks that were already forming in the band themselves, and by the time they recorded their next album, the group that cut this one was already long gone. One can only dream of what they might have achieved had they stuck together. AMG.

listen here