J.B. Hutto & His Hawks – Hawk Squat (w/ Sunnyland Slim)
Delmark 617
“The raw-as-an-open-wound Chicago slide guitarist J.B. Hutto outdid himself throughout an outrageously raucous album anchored by an impossible-to-ignore ‘Hip Shakin’, the blaring title cut, and savage renditions of ‘20% Alcohol’ and ‘Notoriety Woman’.” -Bill Dahl, allmusic.com. The rough & rowdy blues heard at Turner’s Lounge was the inspiration for this explosive 1968 recording. Blues legend Sunnyland Slim guests with The Hawks on piano and organ.
Robert Nighthawk – Bricks In My Pillow
Pearl PL-11 [United Series]
LP Record
Robert Nighthawk recorded for United at its first day of sessions and two of United’s first five releases were by “Robert Nighthawk and his Nighthawks Band”. He had a national hit in late ’49 on Aristocrat and perhaps United envisioned Nighthawk as its blues-singing slide guitar rival to Chess’ Muddy Waters. Sales didn’t pan out but to many he is the ultimate slide guitarist of the amplified blues era, one who influenced Muddy Waters, Elmore James and Earl Hooker. B.B. King cited Nighthawk as one of his “10 Favorite Guitarists” in “Guitar Player” magazine and today, more than 30 years after his death, Nighthawk is ranked among the greats in blues history. Recording contains two previously unissued alternate takes.
Otis Rush – Cold Day In Hell
Delmark 638
Guts. That’s what this record is all about: Otis Rush’s days in hell, and the tentative joys of returning above ground. Everything about Otis Rush says guts: his squeezing, piercing guitar, his raw-boned, blood-tinged vocals, his lyrics, full of a profound sense of the trips men and women lay on each other – and most of all, his courage to open up from the inside and let all this out in his music.
Anthony Braxton – 3 Compositions Of New Jazz
Delmark 415 [A.A.C.M. Jazz Series] (1968)
Anthony Braxton was first documented as a player in 1967 on Muhal Richard Abrams’ Levels And Degrees Of Light (Delmark 413). Nine months of gestation produced this, his first recording as a leader. Braxton the player/composer/constructor is here at full length; in retrospect he was a much more developed and confident musician than he may have seemed at the time.
