Otis Rush – Ain’t Enough Comin’ In – Mercury Records 314518769-2

They separately and communally conveyed an up-to-the-minute unrelenting, burning blues strain to the forefront in the latter-day 1950s period Chicago.  Addressing the world from the big city’s tense west side, a trio of top-gun blues guitarist players came forward with a fresh sound, one that resonated with earnestness and deep soul, a new blues authenticity that for all-time altered the blues guitar backdrop.  With fellow blues guitar champions Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, Otis Rush transformed metropolitan blues to higher levels of effusive textures.  His vocals were lamenting discourses on the human state, and his multifaceted picking and throbbing chord expressions authorized his blues to struggle in musical torment.  This is not to imply in any way that Rush was unable of rejoicing; in unqualified fact, his acuity sanctions him to do so exceptionally well.  But his grand yearning appeals, and dark, thoughtful guitar solos yield his somber blues as art of the uppermost classification.  In summation, Rush’s blues were menacing and transfixing, impassioned and personal, and a crucial link in the rebirth of the blues’ charted course during the later 1950s and forward. 

Rush’s career and personal travails are the stuff of a fuller writing, but when his blues ponderings were ideally aligned, as they are on this phenomenal 1994 outing, blues worthy of the greatest accolades burst forth. 

Here, under the ideal production efforts of John Porter, Rush exhumes his greatest blues powers with a dozen incredibly solid pieces of musical art.  His vocals are tantalizingly passionate, his guitar expeditions shimmer and tear with his patented vibrato assault, and though some of the material has previously seen the light of day, it burns and sears with newfound intensity.

Rush seemed completely invested in this collectively tasty blues stew, and as anyone who has studied his great musical gifts knows, when he was “on” there was no one, and I mean no one, who was better.

Below is the running track order of this spectacular CD. 

Song Titles

• Don’t Burn Down The Bridge
• That Will Never Do
• Somebody Have Mercy
• A Fool For You
• Homework
• My Jug And I
• She’s A Good ‘Un
• It’s My Own Fault
• Ain’t Enough Comin’ In
• If I Had Any Sense, I’d Go Back Home
• Ain’t That Good News
• As The Years Go Passing By

Highly recommended!