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Otis
Rush- Tops
Original Release Date: 1985
1.
Right Place, Wrong Time (Rush) - 6:12
2. Crosscut Saw (Ford) - 4:38
3. Tops (Rush) - 3:55
4. Feel So Bad (Willis) - 4:10
5. Gambler's Blues (Willis) - 4:10
6. Keep on Loving Me Baby (Rush) - 2:54
7. I Wonder Why (Hooker) - 7:52
Review
(by Tommy
Chung)
In
1948, Otis Rush moved from Mississippi to Chicago. He has
recorded some all time classics like Double
Trouble, All Your Love and
I Can't Quit You Baby. Some people say his
recordings under the Cobra label recorded between 1956 and
1958 were his best recordings. These recordings are basically
48rpm A sides and B sides and can be found on Otis
Rush: His Cobra Recordings (Flyright FLYCD
001). To me, these recordings are bit rough and ready and
I could feel Otis was still trying to refine his music when
these songs were recorded. In recent years, Otis Rush has
released several recordings worthy of note including Right
Place, Wrong Time on Hightone Records (HCD-8007),
Lost
In The Blues on Alligator (ALCD 4797), and
Ain't
Enough Coming In.
Otis
Rush has a great voice and he is pretty much a laid back guitarist.
He is left- handed and like Albert King, plays with the high
E string on top. Frankly speaking, the guitar of Otis Rush
is too laid back to ever catch fire, it only smothers and
he has a limited amount of licks on the guitar. His recent
recordings are sometimes too laid back for me and at times
one song sounds so similar to another that you have to pick
up the sleeve to check if there is something wrong with your
hearing. But no doubt about it, the man has class and is a
master of his own. He has his own style. Whether you like
it or not is a different matter, but he is the master of the
laid back style of Blues.
Tops
was recorded live recorded at the 1985 San Francisco Blues
Festival. This is Otis Rush at his best. The backing band
included bass, drums, rhythm guitar, piano and a horn section
comprising a trumpet and a saxophone. Otis plays in his own
relaxed and unhurried style. The backing band was smoking
and Otis's voice and guitar worked perfectly with the band.
The CD kicked off with Right Place,
Wrong Time which very much set the tempo for
the whole recording. Otis did a version of Crosscut
Saw which suited ideally to his laid back and
sporadic stop-start solo picking. The highlights of the recording
are Tops and Feel
So Bad. Tops
is an instrumental track, with beautiful guitar work, tasty
and sweet as an apple. It is a lesson in guitar economics.
It really shows you don't have to be lightning fast, cramming
hundreds of notes into a solo line to make it sound good.
Feel So Bad is another
great track. Otis Rush's guitar sounds so good on this.
Otis
Rush is undoubtedly a master of this style of laid back Blues.
No one comes close. He may not exactly set fire to your hi-fi
stereo, but he can sure touch you with his intensity and emotion.
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