JAMES COTTON RECORDED LIVE AT ANTONE’S NIGHT CLUB
Especially frustrating was the live recording that should have put Cotton over the top: an atrociously produced double LP on Buddah in 1976 that managed to drain most of the emotion from one of his most thrilling performances, a three-night stand at Connecticut’s Shaboo Inn. I was lucky enough to attend, and the performance bore no resemblance to the dull record that resulted.
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In recent years, prevailing opinion has been that Cotton has undergone something of a decline. His voice, never the strongest, has deteriorated; it’s now little more than a hoarse croak most of the time. And the bands he’s fronted lately have been heavy on rock-oriented boogie and light on the subtleties of blues tradition. Still, he continues to show enough of the old blues fire in his performances that an LP like this one was eagerly anticipated. Many thought that this effort, which teams him up with Muddy Waters’s last, great rhythm section (pianist Pinetop Perkins, bassist Calvin Jones, and drummer Willie Smith) and his own old compatriots Matt Murphy and Luther Tucker on guitar, was his best chance in years to showcase his true talents.
The unit kicks into full gear on “It Ain’t Right,” a romping, rollicking blues number written by another harmonica master, Little Walter Jacobs. The band settles into a dancing, propulsive groove that allows Cotton to pour his full energy into his blowing and singing. His voice is much more expressive on this tune than elsewhere, and his harp cuts through the jaunty tempo with its usual raucous grittiness.
The final cut, an update of Cotton’s old signature tune “Midnight Creeper,” is one of the LPs most pleasant surprises. This is Cotton’s live-performance tour de force, the one that cemented his reputation as a vein-popping, wild-eyed harmonica madman back in the days when he’d start his show with a somersault across the stage and be drenched in sweat by the time he finished his second chorus. It’s a great crowd-pleasing culmination to a live performance, but on several recorded versions it’s sounded repetitious and even sloppy. Here Cotton employs more subtlety than usual, with some musical ideas interspersed between the inevitable histrionic bouts. Toward the end, Murphy unfurls his awe-inspiring “spidering” technique, firing off furious flurries from the lowest bass registers through his screaming treble with a speed and accuracy that nearly defy comprehension.
