• Rating:
Well, yes, there are moments of exhaustion and stress even for a little piece of ice like me, who today is trying to escape the clutches of a crazy climate and its sinuous, yet deadly, blasts of African wind. During this period, I am in pieces. My leg is, that's a fact. And so I am busy from morning to night watching the rolls of fat grow and cleaning my nostrils with the nails of my right paw. The left one, on the other hand, works tirelessly further south. In short, I too, damn it, need to soothe the disastrous effects of this whirlwind life and slow down a bit. My dealer weighs like air and, forgive the scant originality, I will call him Secco for that reason. Secco in my eyes has an immense musical culture: I just have to ask and this smoky figure is always ready to gift me rare pearls. Pieces of plastic unknown to most, yet so damn beautiful. I finely chop them on the table and then shoot myself strips of notes so intoxicating and wonderful that I sometimes feel like writing about them.
Eddie Hinton, Very Extremely Dangerous (1978) - Capricorn Records.
Secco grabs a beer, and while he lends me the CD, he educates me. He likes to do it, and I like listening to him. It's a nice way to pass the time, a bit like when you read the encyclopedic and passion-filled musical comments of Pistol-Imasoul-Pete-Man & Co. Secco has a passion for the unfortunate figures who have ended up in oblivion or nearly so. He talks about Hinton as if he were an old friend of his and his eyes light up when he unfolds the story of the white Otis Redding to me. He falls silent to let me listen, and indeed the timbre of that voice, so rough, is unmistakable. Coarse sandpaper that leaves its mark on the ears of those who listen. A musician’s musician, he played lead guitar for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section as a session man. Secco notices that I've dropped that name like a stone in a river, and then, with growing passion, he machine-guns a barrage of names: Aretha Franklin, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Johnny Taylor, Elvis Presley, and many others that I miss. It was the producer of Wilson Pickett (Jerry Wexler) who nicknamed him The White Otis Redding, describing him as a total talent who could play any instrument damn well.
Produced by Barry Beckett, recorded in 1977 at the legendary Muscle Shoals studios with the "cream" of the session men of that typical sound of the era, and released by Capricorn Records. Very Extremely Dangerous had everything in place to definitively launch Hinton, but unfortunately, the record label, after the album's release, closed, not allowing the widespread distribution it undoubtedly deserved. It was a blow from which Hinton never fully recovered. He died at just 51 in 1995 from a heart attack, and his figure remains unknown to most, like the one stuck to the wet and dark wall of the album's stunning cover.
Secco leaves, and I know a little more about this piece of plastic, and I turn the volume up to the sky and close my eyes.
I totally immerse myself in a magnetic southern soul of exceptional quality, without faltering and played in an impeccably tremendous way. Even an incompetent like me can appreciate the precision of the rhythm section of Hood and Hawkins, the riffs and guitar arpeggios of Hinton and Johnson, the piano, and the horn section with Calloway, Thompson, Good, and Eade. It starts with You Got Me Singing: a wonderful guitar arpeggio and the horns prepare for the entrance of Hinton's guttural, desperate, and passionate voice that rides the rhythm section of the piece. It's a varied album that alternates more melodic tracks like Concept World with more classic ones reminiscent of Otis Redding such as I Got The Feeling and Shout Bamalama. The rhythms slow down in the desperate and introspective Get Off In Me only to accelerate in the Southern Soul of Brand New Man. It closes with I Want It All with superb bass work by David Hood and the horns.
Loading comments slowly
