J.B. Hutto – Slidewinder – Delmark Records DD-636

How about this!  It’s two weeks in a row that the work of J.B. Hutto’s work gets reviewed!  Respectfully, his work is so infectious and blues-to-the-core that it again demands to be praised for its high merits.

This eight-cut 1990 CD is a reissue of the original 1973 Delmark Records LP release.  The original LP was released under the names of J.B. Hutto & The Hawks.  The individual titles of the CD reissue mirror those found on the 1973 album.

Accompanying Hutto on these cuts are Lee Jackson on guitar, Bombay Carter on bass, and Elbert Buckner on drums.  Of course, Hutto’s slide guitar and vocal proficiencies are the focus here.

The superb selections found on this collection were recorded on December, 19^th and 20^th, 1972 in Chicago.

No less than Bill Dahl, the admired writer and music commentator found Slidewinder to be substandard and bearing insipid song choices.  While I admire and respect Dahl greatly for his myriad contributions to music, I find the totality of his feelings for Slidewinder entirely ill-judged.

Hutto amply continues to supply sharp-edged, unsmoothed brilliance from his instrument, in a manner that led he and his musical associates to put forth a ravaged form of urban blues that can only be compared to an electric force of nature. 

This outing is fueled by its very stripped-down character.  It isn’t polished, it isn’t shy, it isn’t for the wallflower among us.  This is brash inner-city 1970s Chicago blues at it best.  Closing one’s eyes yields a vision of Hutto and his crew on some cramped blues joint’s stage, perhaps at Turner’s, smoke heavy in the air, the smells of stale beer and perfume abounding, with the threat of violence around every corner.

This is Hutto leading a blues disturbance.  It’s a blues clamor breaking out.  It’s a Hutto musical brawl. 

Slidewinder is seen as recommended for any blues collection.  A better treatise of Chicago’s hard early 1970s blues is challenging to uncover.  Modern blues did not begin with Hutto, but he abetted in the formation and development of the modern Chicago blues style.  This is outstanding Chicago blues; blues slide guitar of the topmost level.