Live effort by Little Sonny with his son on guitar (by then the largest audience they have ever played, as said on an interview in this album). The two interviews and three singles, specially The Creeper (a must for harp players later re-recorded by Mark Hummel) add a little flavor on top as nice and rare extras.

Originally released on Stax's short-lived Enterprise label, this finds Detroit harp man Aaron "Little Sonny" Willis backed by Memphis players working in an early-'70s blues-rock groove. The Bar-Kays provide the horn blasts, and although it would be a sin for Memphis players to overplay on anything, nothing here really catches fire; the whole session stays in low gear throughout.

It's unequivocally nice to have Little Sonny back in harness after a long recording hiatus, but the harpist's comeback offering suffers from backing that feels too mechanical to really do his supple harp justice. A little more earthiness would have suited the project much better.

A coupling of the harpist's first and third LPs for Stax's Enterprise subsidiary and the best spot to inaugurate a Little Sonny CD collection. 1970's New King is mostly instrumental and places Sonny in a funky, contemporary setting; 1973's Hard Goin' Up was his best album for the firm, benefitting from excellent material spotlighting his vocal talents in a soul-slanted format.

The Stax empire wasn't exactly renowned for its legion of blues harpists, but Little Sonny found the Memphis firm quite an agreeable home during the early '70s (he even appeared in the label's grandiose concert film, Wattstax, albeit very briefly).
Little Sonny, whose birth name is Aaron Willis, is a product of Detroit's blues scene. He moved to the Motor City in 1953 after growing up on his dad's farm in Alabama (his mom gave him his nickname). When Little Sonny wasn't working local haunts with John Lee Hooker, Eddie Burns, Eddie Kirkland, Baby Boy Warren, or Washboard Willie (who gave him his first paying gig), he was snapping photos of the patrons for half a buck a snap…