The first album by the Crawdaddys, Crawdaddy Express – recorded in monaural; talk about looking back! – came out in 1979 as the initial LP on Voxx Records. Allmusic gives the album 4½ stars and states in the review by Matt Carlson: “The Crawdaddys started their recording career properly, releasing a record with nothing but ’60s R&B, British Invasion, and blues standards (in addition to two original compositions).” Mike Stax, who later founded and edited Ugly Things magazine, was so impressed with the album that he eventually moved to California from London so that he could join the band. As quoted in the Simon Reynolds book, Stax admitted that the band wasn’t “original in any shape or form”, but that their “total purity was thrilling in its audacity”, and that their debut album was “virtually indistinguishable from the real thing”.
As described above, the resulting debut album, Crawdaddy Express by the Crawdaddys was comprised mostly of covers of R&B classics by Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, and John Lee Hooker; plus a few from other sources, such as the old Hank Snow tune “I’m Movin’ On” and the magnificent Van Morrison song “Mystic Eyes” that opened the first album by Them. Only a few familiar songs were included on the album, such as “You Can’t Judge a Book” and “Down the Road a Piece”. Just two original recordings were included on the album, the title song “Crawdaddy Express” and “Got You in My Soul” (both written by Ron Silva and Steve Potterf).
A German record label called Line Records collected the single and EP by the Crawdaddys and released an album called Still Steamin’, with “There She Goes Again” on Side 1 at 45 rpm and the other 6 songs on Side 2 at 33 rpm. Line Records also re-released the Crawdaddy Express LP and the “There She Goes Again” single in 1985; later, the label combined all of the Voxx Records material onto a CD in 1989 called Mystic Crawdaddys. Voxx Records did the same with their CD reissue of Crawdaddy Express in 1994.
(January 2015/2)
