Guitarist Hubert Sumlin’s music is characterized by an obstinate, almost compulsive individualism. He’s best known for his work as Howlin’ Wolf’s accompanist during Wolf’s Chess Records heyday. His eerie leads, shimmering like steel behind Wolf’s primal roar, alternated between staccato fierceness and an almost hornlike exploratory impetus. Sometimes sounding like he was barely under control, he played a major role in creating the nearly mystical sense of foreboding characteristic of Wolf’s sound during that period. Eventually Sumlin’s surrealistic harmonic concepts were adapted by 60s-era blues rockers; Eric Clapton, among others, has cited him as a major inspiration.
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Wolf died in 1976. In his fitful career since then, Sumlin has attempted to both honor and transcend his reputation as one of the great blues sidemen. His inability to remain focused, however, has been a hindrance. He sometimes seems wrapped in a hazy cocoon of isolation on the bandstand. While his band tries to provide sufficient structure to keep him grounded, he stands off to one side, head askew, eyes staring into space, an enigmatic half-smile on his lips. His solos squirm and burst into jagged patterns of eccentric beauty, then all too often dissolve painfully into discord. His lyrics, often improvised, cascade and bounce off one another in ricochets of free association and random imagery.
About three years ago, at the same time he was straightening out a drug and alcohol problem that had nearly destroyed him, Earl tore himself away from his secure but musically limiting job with Roomful of Blues to plunge into a solo career. Since then he’s dug back into his Chicago roots to reclaim some of that music’s raw intensity; he’s also continued to explore more complex improvisational directions.
It was during the second set that Sumlin and Earl finally fell into synergy, and the result was spellbinding. As Sumlin noodled fiercely through the registers, Earl stood face-to-face with him, leering and bouncing in time with the music, forcing structure on Sumlin’s errant muse. With the rhythm section pounding behind him and Earl goading him on, it was virtually impossible for Sumlin to squirm out of the restrictions of the blues form. Within those restrictions his solos soared, groveled, flip-flopped, and somersaulted into crazy patterns that strained against the boundaries Earl and the band laid down.
Such moments rarely occur between musicians who play together every night; they’re virtually unheard- of in a show like this, pairing artists who may see each other a few times a year at most. It would be tempting to say that this was simply a meeting of two men with complementary styles, who happened to encounter each other on a night when each was at the top of his game.
