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Originally Posted by vermicious knid
I enjoy the liner notes. Did people know that she was in an earlier band called Sounds of Blue?
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Remember the TUSK documentary when Chris is on the yacht and says, “For some obscure reason, I was playing bass”? That was Sounds of Blue. She was the bassist.
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And I didn't know that they worked with celebrated American blues musicians. I don't know much about Freddie King and Walter "Shakey" Horton, but reading about their performances together has made me start learning.
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I think Stan Webb turned her on to Freddie King because he knew that Christine needed a little blues piano training — in fact, she asked for it before joining Chicken Shack. It was an opportune moment because listening to Freddie King and his frequent pianist Sonny Thompson really built the Christine style.
A long time ago, I bought meself a Freddie King full-score music portfolio published by Hal Leonard, which notated a bunch of tracks on staff, including Sonny’s piano. I just devoured it and learned as much as I could (Christine had to learn it by ear). If you stare at Sonny’s piano parts — the I–V bass shuffle, the little blues licks and turnarounds in the right hand — you can see exactly where Christine developed her style for Fleetwood Mac. Sonny was not a barrel-house player and was not splashy at all. He played
rhythm parts and helped create the pocket, which is exactly what Chris has always done! (The 1979 “Angel” is built upward from the electric piano.) The two blues guys who built her style are Sonny Thompson and Bob Hall. (To this day, sometimes I hear Bob Hall’s old recordings and think it’s Chris playing.)