Charlie Musselwhite is an American icon. His story is entangled in the story of America, and he’s been tracing its highways and entertaining its audiences, and those abroad, for nearly six decades. So, it’s fitting that his new record, out May 16th on Forty Below Records, is entitled Look Out Highway, and it’s remarkable that a man who has spent more days on the road than off still brings such spirit and passion to the music and the lifestyle.

With its signature blend of Delta and Chicago blues mixed with Memphis soul, Look Out Highway is pure Charlie Musselwhite. Recorded at Kid Andersen’s Greaseland Studio in San Jose California, it’s the first time Charlie has recorded with his long-time touring band, comprised of guitarist Matt Stubbs (GA-20), drummer June Core (Robert Lockwood Jr.) and bassist Randy Bermudes (James Cotton), along with Andersen who has been in and out of the band for many years. Their chemistry and command is abundantly clear from the opening notes. “We finished a gig at The Iridium in New York City and flew straight to California to record.”, Charlie effuses.

About the album’s title and opening track, he explains, “The beat came from an old Gospel tune, and I just had it rolling around in my head until I caught the scent and found the trail that led to the melody and lyrics.” The groove is all business, hypnotizing like the white lines of the highway. The vocal is soulful and plaintive and the harmonica playing, ferocious, as you’d expect.

Songs like “Open Road”, “Highway 61”and “Baby Won’t You Please Help Me” build on these themes of rambling and the road. In the latter, a driving infectious rhythm, soaring guitar and searing harmonica are interwoven with tinkling piano while Musselwhite sings of a man tailed by the blues, nodding to his roots “I was born in Mississippi, I was raised in Tennessee.”

Musselwhite is a prolific songwriter seeming to write organic compelling stories with ease. There is real emotional depth at the core of his songs. Take “Sad Eyes”, a wonderful soul tune with a memorable guitar lick perfectly punctuated by Core’s drumming. Stubbs and Bermudes brought in the music and Charlie again flipped through his book of words and stories until he “found the scent”, casually painting the picture of two people filling a void for each other, pretending to love, knowing it’s not going to last.

With “Ghosts of Memphis” Musselwhite features his friend, rapper Al Kapone, recalling “all the characters missing from days past who appear as ghosts whenever I’m back in Memphis.”

Another standout track is the Allen Reynolds composition “Ready For Times To Get Better” which features another unexpected guest, sensational young singer Edna Nicole. Its slinky soul blues provides the backdrop for a timely message sure to resonate with many who have endured so much during and since the pandemic.

Throughout his illustrious career Charlie Musselwhite has received 13 Grammy nominations, including his last release Mississippi Son and 33 Blues Music Awards. In 2014 his collaboration with Ben Harper Get Up won a Grammy and in 2010 he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

Charlie’s career took off quickly soon after arriving in Chicago in the early sixties, where he was an integral part of the blues renaissance along with the likes of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, both genuine proteges of Little Walter, Muddy and The Wolf. In 1967 at just 22 years of age, he released his debut album Stand Back! garnering significant critical acclaim.

On somewhat of a whim, Musselwhite relocated to San Francisco that same year. Contemporaries like Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield followed suit and were welcomed into the counterculture scene around the Fillmore West as authentic purveyors of real deal blues.

Charlie has also collaborated with an eclectic list of incredible artists over the years, including Ben Harper, Cyndi Lauper, Eddie Vedder, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Gov’t Mule, INXS, Mickey Hart and Japan’s Kodo Drummers, George Thorogood, Eliades Ochoa, Cat Stevens, Elvin Bishop and, close friend and best man at his wedding John Lee Hooker. In 2023, Musselwhite was cast in Martin Scorsese’s film Killers of the Flower Moon.

More than any other harmonica player of his generation, Charlie Musselwhite can rightfully lay claim to inheriting the mantle of many of the great harp players that came before him with music as dark as Mississippi mud and as uplifting as the blue skies of California. In an era when the term legendary gets applied to auto-tuned pop stars, this singular blues harp player, singer, songwriter, and guitarist has earned and deserves to be honored as a true master of American classic vernacular music.