Jeff Beck & The Big Town Playboys – Crazy Legs …album review

I started to listen to this album and got hooked from the opening song. I kept listening to the entire album over and over. This could have been recorded in the 1950s… that’s how close they are to that sound.

Most people know Jeff Beck for his blazing guitar work on albums like Blow by Blow and Wired, but in 1993 he surprised a lot of fans by taking a sharp turn into rockabilly. Beck teamed up with the British revival group The Big Town Playboys to record Crazy Legs, an album dedicated to the music of Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps. For Beck, it was a chance to pay tribute to guitarist Cliff Gallup, the man he often called his biggest influence as a young player.

The Big Town Playboys had built a reputation in Britain by recreating the rhythm and blues, rockabilly, and jump blues sounds of the 1940s and 1950s. They were fronted by vocalist and pianist Mike Sanchez, the band was already well known among musicians. Beck had admired their work and felt they were the perfect group to help recreate the sound and spirit of Gene Vincent’s classic recordings.

The album was recorded and mixed at The Townhouse Studios in London and was produced by Stuart Colman. Rather than modernizing the songs, Beck and the band tried to capture the energy of the original recordings. They succeeded so well that I would have never guessed it was recorded in 1993.

The track list included Gene Vincent favorites such as Race With the Devil, Cruisin’, Pink Thunderbird, and the title track Crazy Legs. One of my favorites is Double Talkin’ Baby, where Beck just rips the guitar. His guitar work is remarkable because he deliberately restrained himself. Instead of the wah-wah-bar fireworks that made him famous, he focused on honoring Cliff Gallup’s style, showing just how deeply those early rockabilly records had shaped him. I could go on and on with the songs…but you’re essentially getting an album full of Gene Vincent’s sound, songs, energy, and a lotta love from Beck. It’s really hard to beat that.

Crazy Legs was never intended to be a huge commercial album. It hardly dented the charts, but that was never really the point. The record was a labor of love from a legendary guitarist paying his respects to one of his heroes. For fans who only know Jeff Beck from his later instrumental work, this album offers a look at the music that inspired him in the first place. Sometimes the best way to understand a great musician is to hear what they were listening to when they were young, and Crazy Legs does exactly that.

Here is a short concert at Ronnie Scotts! Great music and vibe