March 26, 1999
For blues fanatics, one of the genre's greatest tragedies is that we'll never know what might have been if Robert Johnson had lived to pick up an electric guitar. Or do we? Otis Rush is a sadly overlooked bluesman, revered by musicians and unjustly ignored by everyone else, and his marrow-chilling blues do for band-driven electric blues what Johnson did for the high lonely keen of his acoustic.
These recordings show Otis's remarkable strengths - a powerfully affecting low moan of a voice, and rippling, spastic guitar work. Like Johnson before him, Otis's blues aren't cathartic as much as desperate, and his bandmates wrap his wracked, shuddering blues in a graveyard pallor. Otis is all about the slow burn - his downtempo style is almost unbearably tense, and his half-sung, half-groaned vocals only make the atmosphere that much more claustrophobic. When he wails the title line from "My Love Will Never Die", you sense that it's not a pledge, it's an emotional prison sentence. Even his deceptively uptempo numbers show him crooning out lines like "I want to make violent love to you."
Claptonmaniacs will see just what the Brit was trying to measure up to when they hear Otis' "Double Trouble," and will be forced to conclude that he failed miserably. It's a haunting masterpiece, second only to "So Many Roads, So Many Trains," Otis' definitive, terrifying tour de force that unfortunately doesn't appear on this album. But you still get "I Can't Quit You Baby", which will have Zeppelin fans scratching their heads in disbelief, and "Checking On My Baby" indicates that his woman not only brought him gasoline instead of the water he asked for, but forced him to do shots of it followed by matchstick chasers.
While music this shiveringly intense may not be comforting or laid back as most blues, its tortured passion and galvanizing guitar work make it indispensable. The man is still growling around out there in clubs - go see him if you think you're man enough to face his searing, emotionally demanding art.
- Jared O'Connor
desperate blues