Consumer Guide Album

Huey "Piano" Smith: Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu [Hallmark, 2012]
Huey Smith newbies beware: make sure the "Rockin' Pneumonia" on your confusing Spotify list or crappy-looking reissue runs 2:17 or so rather than 3:11 or so, because the longer version that now dominates both the streamosphere and online retail was cut for an Allen Toussaint who paid Huey even worse than Ace's Johnny Vincent--in the '70s no less, when the poor guy was up to his nose in Jehovah and failure and the endless slog of prying his money away from Johnny Vincent. My favorite Ace comp is Music Club's out-of-print 18-track This Is . . . Huey "Piano" Smith, still findable used if you're flush and quick; the 31-track Jax 501 with the same title as the one I'm featuring also looks good. But this more findable albeit shorter item covers most of the bases however much I miss "Beatnik Blues" and "Pop-Eye" and the nutty "Would You Believe It (I Have a Cold)." When his original cast of pranksters augmented his congenial chops and expert groove, piano maestro Smith had as much rock and roll in him as Fats Domino or Bo Diddley. Recording for hang-loose con man Vincent in Jackson rather than friendly professional Cosimo Matassa in New Orleans, he and his Clowns fell into an irreverent merriment in which collectivity was of the essence. His virtuosity and his commitment to fitting in were both so principled that they generated just plain fun in more ways than we can count, because that's the way that great prize just plain fun is. A