Jimmy Rip, the veteran guitarist and producer known for his work with Mick Jagger, Television, and his deep roots in blues and rock, still shakes his head when he talks about what might have been the wildest musical journey of his life: a four-year odyssey across the globe, tracking down legends and recording them—sometimes in makeshift studios, sometimes in world-famous venues—for one monumental album.
“It was madness,” Rip laughs. “Beautiful madness.”
The project began with a simple idea: bring together the world’s greatest guitarists and blues musicians to celebrate the genre that birthed rock ‘n’ roll. But what it became was something far more ambitious. Rip took it personally—he wasn’t just producing an album; he was documenting a living, breathing musical history through the voices and strings of its most iconic figures.
“I recorded B.B. King on his tour bus in Memphis,” Rip recalls, “because he had no time to stop. He was still gigging like a man half his age. We parked the bus, ran cables out into a portable setup, and rolled tape while he played that sweet, mournful Lucille.”
Then there was the time with Jimmy Page in London. “We had this crumbling studio—dust on everything, but the acoustics were magic. Page walked in with this aura about him, but he was so generous, so into the music. He laid down one of the most haunting slide guitar parts I’ve ever heard. No overdubs, no edits—just pure feel.”
Rip didn’t stop in the usual places. “We tracked Buddy Guy during a snowstorm in Chicago. I remember hauling gear through knee-deep snow. But when Buddy started playing, you forgot about the cold. His playing just cuts through everything—weather, time, space.”
Some sessions were surreal. “We were in Tokyo with a jazz-blues fusion guy, then two weeks later, recording in a crumbling church in Buenos Aires with a local blues prodigy. It didn’t matter where we were—everyone brought their soul to it.”
Altogether, 22 musicians from different backgrounds and generations contributed. Some were household names; others were underground legends. The unifying thread? A shared reverence for the blues and a willingness to put ego aside and let the music lead.
“We never used a click track,” Rip says proudly. “Every session was live. If someone hit a wrong note, we kept it. That was the point—real music, human music.”
By the time the album wrapped, Rip had nearly circled the globe twice. There were moments of exhaustion, doubt, and even disaster (a power outage mid-session in Brazil, customs seizing tapes in Eastern Europe), but the end result was something timeless.
“That album is more than just a record,” Rip says. “It’s a snapshot of the spirit of music—raw, ragged, and beautiful. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.”
