★★★★★
I recall about 20 years ago finishing a 5K road race and the post-race entertainment on board a riverboat was Baton Rouge's Johnny Ramistella, a.k.a. Johnny Rivers. Until I heard this CD recently, I'd forgotten how blown away I was that evening. Rivers left smoke on the bandstand after his set that night. This guy has still got it, and this release underlines that fact...
- www.offbeat.com
2010-11-02
★★★★★
Thank the latest rock and roll revival--there are so many of them, you know?--for respite on the radio and another album of Rivers-a-go-go. There are modernization moves, of course--two get-out-the-vote songs (just what George needs) plus the mysterious reggae conceit plus a heartfelt if belated antiwar song--but basically this is just Johnny nasalizing on some fine old memories. "Rockin' Pneumonia" and "Knock on Wood" are especially fine.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Johnny Rivers was no stranger to live albums by the time he released this 1973 show taped at the close of a European tour. His first four albums were all recorded live at the Los Angeles club the Whisky A Go-Go in the mid-'60s, and from those albums five singles went into the national Top Ten. After 1967, Rivers' recording career basically dried up for five years, until he returned to the Top Ten with a cover of Huey "Piano" Smith & the Clowns' "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27
★★★★★
Johnny Rivers' early-'70s album L.A. Reggae was an all-star affair, including Jimmy Webb on keyboards and Crickets co-founder Jerry Allison on drums. It was somewhat of a big-band affair as well, with more than a dozen hands, yet it never sounds overblown or over-produced, and it did return Rivers to the charts after a disappointing start to the decade...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27
★★★★★
Johnny Rivers was about 15 years removed from the recording studio and nearly 20 from a hit when he cut this album between 1996 and 1998. During the '60s and early '70s, Rivers had been one of the most consistently successful American solo artists: his covers of previously proven R&B;/blues, folk and rock/pop songs (Chuck Berry's "Memphis," Willie Dixon's "Seventh Son," Leadbelly's "Midnight Special") and new tunes written to order (P.F...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27
★★★★★
You'd think that by his fourth album in this format from this venue, Johnny Rivers would start to get a little redundant, but that wasn't the case, as is obvious from the opening track, "Seventh Son" -- Rivers takes an approach that manages to intersect with swamp rock, white soul, and garage punk, all neatly wrapped up in three minutes so potent that it shot into the Top Ten on the Billboard Hot 100...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27
★★★★★
One of the most underrated rockers of the 1960s, Johnny Rivers was a guy who served up the big beat strong and simple -- on most of his best records, he set up at the Whisky A Go-Go in L.A. with a crack rhythm section and rolled tape as he let rip on a set of classic R&B; tunes and pop hits, with his sturdy but passionate voice and no-nonsense guitar work doing the talking...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27
★★★★★
The second of two distinctly retro albums released by Johnny Rivers in the early '70s, Blue Suede Shoes had the renowned '60s rock & roller reaching back a decade or more, while in the company of top L.A. session men Joe Osborn, Jim Gordon, Larry Knechtel, Jim Horn, Dean Parks, et al...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27
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