Anders Lewen

[Jim R]

I just recently discovered this player, as a result of some Youtube surfing. I had viewed a Junior Watson performance where he was a guest artist, somewhere in Europe. The band was very good, so I started looking further, and found that it was a Swedish band called "Knockout Greg & Blue Weather". I then followed more links to videos by the guitarist, Anders Lewen, and I was very impressed, not only by his tribute to T-Bone Walker, but by his imagination and fluidity as a blues improviser.

Then, I noticed something unexpected. I saw a link to a video titled "Memphis Guitar Soul". This title struck me as something that was likely a classic song, and he was doing his version of it. Wrong! Apparently Lewen wrote/arranged this little tune himself, and even more surprisingly, did it as part of a medley of 60's-style material for a Swedish-developed video game based on the Vietnam War. At any rate, none of this is as important to me as the music. Wow, do I like this:

My initial reaction after first hearing it was that I wanted to hear more. Not necessarily from Lewen, because this was apparently all he recorded in this style, but something in this vein from the 1960's. This caused me to think about who would have played something like this (and I don't mean vaguely similar, but in the same style). Unfortunatey, for me, 60's Soul/R&B has always taken a back seat to blues and jazz in terms of my focus and collecting habits. I've gradually remedied this somewhat in recent years, but I think I still have a lot to learn. I am aware of a number of guitar players who were important sidemen in bands and as session players (these include some more familiar and some less familiar: Cornell Dupree, Steve Cropper, Reggie Young, Jimmy Johnson, Bobby Womack, Pops Staples), but I'm struggling to find a real source for where this influence on Lewen may have come from. It also occurs to me that this sort of beautiful guitar sound was typically limited to fills/comping on the recordings of others. In other words, I'm blanking on any full albums of guitar instrumentals in this general style during the 60's (a decade of many famous guitar instrumentals in various genres). Any thoughts on any of this would be appreciated.

[Jim R]