40 BLUE FINGERS READY TO SERVE

Original released on LP Blue Horizon 7-63203 

(UK, June 1968)

"40 Blue Fingers, Freshly Packed and Ready to Serve", is an excellent example of the booming late 60's blues scene in & around London. With John Mayall & Alexis Korner creating benchmarks for the British blues scene, Chicken Shack were absolutely in the right place at the right time. If one can overlook Stan Webb's hyperventilating vocal excesses (which ain't easy), this is a promising debut, especially noteworthy for Webb's Freddie King-inspired guitar sting and Christine Perfect's understated vocals (only two, unfortunately compared to Webb's six). Webb does justice to his mentor with two instrumentals, King's "San-Ho-Zay" and his own "Webbed Feet," and Perfect proves the ideal counterpart - one of the few pianists paying homage to King's longtime collaborator Sonny Thompson. Nice spare sound, typical of Mike Vernon's Blue Horizon label. (Dan Forte in AllMusic)