Otis Rush Is Lightning In A Full Bottle
From the smoke filled rooms and back alley windows, 50 years ago, you could probably hear Otis Rush playing. Some records are cut a little deeper. Otis Rush’s The Classic Cobra Recordings: 1956-58 is one of those. I’ve been throwing it on more and more often, at different times of day to see the way it sounds. In the morning, it sounds jubilant, afternoons, it sounds like a casual drink, evening it sounds like misery. From water to wine in one day and back again.This is a what’s-what blues record, you wag your finger drunk as a hammer and say “that’s what’s what Chet.” It’s hard to not like Otis Rush. The man from Philadelphia (Mississippi) and then Chicago will not be denied.
From classic blues rhythms to dark crunchy blues yowls, this particular record has something for almost everyone, except people who don’t like blues music. Otis Rush is a traditional bluesman. There’s a lot of women involved. In songs like “Checking On My Baby”, “If You Were Mine”,”All Your Love”,”I Can’t Quit You Baby”,”My Love Will Never Die” and “Keep On Loving Me” and all the other songs on the album involving love and baby, Otis is head over heels, in for a penny, in for a pound. He’s a man who loves love.
Otis Rush’s tunnel vision, pun intended, in some ways detracts from the scope of his record-by the end of the record, all we know about Rush is that he’s a dog for women and that he wants to make “Violent Love” (a poorly aged hook if I’ve ever heard one). He doesn’t even show the stereotypical love for alcohol that comes with being a bluesman. But in certain moments and the entirety of the banger that is “Double Trouble”, Rush grasps the depths of something earthy and eternal. “If You Were Mine”, for example, transcends the typical blues formula, with its almost poppy (Beatlesque?) melody.
Either way, it’s not an album for the average American or the average layperson. It’s a hard blues throughout, beautiful, weaving piano and guitar stabs, with random surf interludes, 3-4 years before surf took off. It’s the type of weird blues record that requires a certain amount of experience and also skepticism to enjoy. You may not like it.
The guitar work on this record is excellent. The solos are crisp and impactful, whether washed in reverb or cutting through the mix. The guitar and other elements is where the album is perhaps at its best. The surrounding arrangements are perfectly balanced, leaving just the right amount of space for Rush. It’s a record that sonically feels very full despite being relatively standard for the time. It’s hard to say how much of the input was because of Rush as opposed to the various producers, but the songs as compiled on the record are brilliantly arranged none the less.
Played individually the track’s on the record sound like solid stout blues. Played back to back to back, the record is an unrelenting environment, like life inside a groovy black hole. It’s a record that sets its claws in the background and tears up the canvas of reality. Listening to it nearly 65 (!) years later, there is a feeling of nostalgia and ghosts. Like peeking into a shrouded past that twists and lurks unexplained in the distance.
Rush earns his stripes here, in 1956 through 1958, delivering a curb stomping battle smashing compilation of primal scream after primal scream. The Lizard Man hath risen. Clinical, sterile analysis aside, this is a hell driven record, each track a powerhouse of emotion and swagger. Rush sings about women like a dog sings about chasing a bone. The instrumental work is great, the grooves tight, the drums washed out against the back walls and the harmonica working as a solo instrument in its own right. It’s a spacious sound, heavy and humid, hanging in the air like a soundtrack.
The best song on this record has got to be “Double Trouble”, a fiery blues night march that has Rush’s best overall performance, vocally and musically. He never sounds more bulletproof than he does here, conjuring a desperation and power with his voice that he doesn’t really find in some of the other songs on here. Lyrically it’s one of the more complex songs, finding Rush musing about women, money and his relationship with the two. It is a common plight for the blues musician, as he always has women but never has money then will find himself in some bizarre situation where he has money and no women. And frankly sometimes, a fella just feels down.
Another great track is “If You Were Mine” which courses with glimpses of early 60s pop and melodies. It could’ve easily been a Lennon-helmed Beatles track but Rush beat them to it. The clingy, shimmering guitars give a glimmer of sound that might someday inspire the Byrds and other 60s folk-pop. It’s a track that feels timeless, yet perfectly contemporary for its time all at once. The thumping backbeat, whistling harmonica, bombastic horns and electric guitar playing (double meaning absolutely intended) sound like New Orleans went to Mississippi for the weekend and stayed in a shack with free hookers and poker(with only a handful of chips.)
Otis Rush’s 1956-58 Cobra Recordings are a real party and if you’re a blues fan you should attend. Bring your biggest belt buckle and a your drinking cap and a picture of that girl from back home. Your ears will thank you even if your liver surely won’t. It’s a drink and think record for the brave men who think while drinking, which is to say it’s a bluesman’s blues record.
