Bernard Allison - Luther's Blues Tour 2025

Anyone who has ever been to a Bernard Allison concert or knows his discography well knows how much it means to him to keep his father's musical legacy alive. "At the beginning of my career, I made a promise to myself and my mother, Fannie Mae Allison, that I would include at least one or two of my father's songs on every album," he explains. Bernard has kept his word: Both at concerts and on his records, he still faithfully performs his father's songs to this day. He usually does this in a funky, rock-oriented style that is clearly different from the traditional blues he grew up with. When he was still finding his own musical voice, his father encouraged him to "play it the way you feel it" rather than copying what came before him. Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of Ruf Records and more than three decades after the debut of blues guitar master Bernard Allison, Luther's Blues extensively celebrates the musical legacy of Bernard's father Luther Allison - a true legend of Chicago blues and a central figure in the record label's history. The double CD contains 20 outstanding recordings by Bernard Allison, each one a composition by Luther Allison that previously appeared on one of Bernard's many albums. Allison himself selected the tracks for this collection; Pauler Acoustics, a renowned address in the hi-fi scene, has lovingly remastered them.

The 20 Luther Allison songs on Luther's Blues have thus been upgraded for the 21st century by a representative of the next blues generation. They are not necessarily Luther's most famous songs. When working on a new album, Bernard says, he often looks for "songs that were overlooked by my father back then. I then give them my own touch".
The track list on the two CDs spans exactly 30 years, from "Hang On" - recorded in Paris in the summer of 1992, when Allison was only in his mid-twenties - to the two tracks from the last studio album Highs & Lows, which reached number 1 on the Billboard Blues Chart in 2022 and was nominated for Blues Rock Album of the Year at the Blues Music Awards. There are also new versions of familiar Luther Allison songs such as "Bad Love", "Life Is A Bitch" and "Let's Try It Again". Bernard Allison has played a major role in ensuring that these songs, which are now considered classics, have remained in our collective consciousness. This also applies in particular to "Serious", an exceptional track that first appeared on a Luther Allison record in 1987. His son plays it at every concert without exception and considers it to be his father's most popular song worldwide.
He has never lost sight of where he came from and is back on tour!