| 1 |
Tore Up |
| 2 |
Right Place, Wrong Time |
| 3 |
Easy Go |
| 4 |
Three Times A Fool |
| 5 |
Rainy Night In Georgia |
| 6 |
Natural Ball |
| 7 |
I Wonder Why |
| 8 |
Your Turn To Cry |
| 9 |
Lonely Man |
| 10 |
Take A Look Behind |
This contemporary album by Otis Rush challenges the brilliance of his
1950s work for Cobra. Recorded in 1971 for Capitol but unissued until
1976, when the tiny Bullfrog label rescued the project, the album has
Rush backed by a driving combo with three horns on searing revivals of
"Tore Up" and "Natural Ball," a tortured "Your Turn to Cry," and the
intense title track. The Chicago great's vibrato-laden guitar work is
mesmerizing, his vocals impassioned, and his band combative. (B.D.) -- © Frank John Hadley 1993
---
This recording session was not released until five years after it was
done. One can imagine the tapes practically smoldering in their cases,
the music is so hot. Sorry, there is nothing "wrong" about this blues
album at all. Otis Rush was a great blues expander, a man whose guitar
playing was in every molecule pure blues. On his solos on this album he
strips the idea of the blues down to very simple gestures (i.e., a bent
string, but bent in such a subtle way that the seasoned blues listener
will be surprised). As a performer he opens up the blues form with his
chord progressions and use of horn sections, the latter instrumentation
again added in a wonderfully spare manner, bringing to mind a master
painter working certain parts of a canvas in order to bring in more
light. Blues fans who get tired of the same old song structures, riff,
and rhythms should be delighted with most of Rush's output, and this one
is among his best. Sometimes all he does to make a song sound unlike
any blues one has ever heard is just a small thing -- a chord moving up
when one expects it go down, for example. The production is particularly
skilled, and the fact that Capitol Records turned this session down
after originally producing it can only be reasonably accepted when
combined with other decisions this label has made, such as turning down
the Doors because singer Jim Morrison had "no charisma." This record
doesn't mess around at all. The first track takes off like the man they
fire out of a cannon at the end of a circus, a perceived climax
swaggeringly representing just the beginning, after all. Some of the
finest tracks are the ones that go longer than five minutes, allowing
the players room to stretch. And that means more of Rush's great guitar
playing, of course. For the final track he leaves the blues behind
completely for a moving cover version of "Rainy Night in Georgia" by
Tony Joe White. ~ Eugene Chadbourne