Essential!
Docendo Discimus | Vita scholae | 03/22/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is one of a dozen absolutely essential purchases if you're into classic Chicago blues. Or rather, the music is. Whether you get this P-Vine CD or Paula/Varese's better-known "Essential Collection: The Classic Cobra Recordings 1956-1958" really isn't a matter of life or death, although this one does feature three more alternates, and the fidelity might just be the tiniest bit better.
But either way - this is the stuff. In his mid-twenties at the time, singer/guitarist Otis Rush committed his lasting legacy to tape for Eli Toscano's Cobra label, a stirring collection of powerful, swaggering mid-tempo grinds and intense slow blues like the Willie Dixon-penned "I Can't Quit You Baby".
The material is split about evenly between Rush's own songs and the compositions of the great Willie Dixon, and Rush's material is actually every bit as great as veteran songwriter Dixon's. Just listen to Rush's powerful, expressive tenor voice and sizzling lead guitar on the classics "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)", "Three Times a Fool", and "Keep Loving Me Baby".
Rush is left-handed, and plays upside-down in the manner of Albert King, and some people like to cite this as a possible reason for his unusually incendiary, imaginitive lead guitar playing. Me, I think Otis Rush would have been great no matter which hand he had played with.
His brand of late-50s Chicago blues was generally a bit less rough and boisterous than the music of Howlin' Wolf, but not as polished as that of B.B. King, and he was a major source of inspiration to Stevie Ray Vaughan, who named his band after Rush's song "Double Trouble", and did a great rendition of "All Your Love".
If talent was everything and luck and timing never mattered, Otis Rush would currently be hailed as the reigning king of Chicago blues, and this is his lasting legacy. If he had never recorded another note, his reputation would be intact based solely on these eight singles.
Highly, highly recommended."