Hey Baby!

AMG Review of Hey Baby!

Richie Unterberger
All Music Guide

Nineteen of his vintage sides, many mining the same Cajun/Tex-Mex/shuffle groove as "Hey Baby," sometimes simply rewriting the song sideways by inserting or mildly modifying its key riffs. It's still highly enjoyable stuff, just too derivative of his one great hit to qualify him as a true original. McClinton plays harmonica on several of the tracks, and also wrote one of them, "My Baby"; the LP also includes his 1968 British hit "Keep On." The sound and liner notes aren't that great; this interesting early exponent of southern swamp rock deserves a more carefully packaged retrospective on CD.