LICKIN’ GRAVY
Once you listen to the music, you’re still befuddled. Butler’s style has been described as everything from Chicago blues to swamp blues, and none of it really begins to describe what he does. It might help to take note of Butler’s primary influences. From harpist Rice Miller (aka Sonny Boy Williamson Number Two) he picked up much of his raw, sidewinding harmonica technique and penchant for showmanship; he also seems to have absorbed Miller’s obstinate individualism and his skills as a blues storyteller. Butler’s lyrics weave eloquent and offbeat tales, products of an imagination whose quirks and irregular flights of fancy seem endless.
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Butler’s knack for couching stories in colorful, deeply personal imagery also links him to his old Texas compatriot Lightnin’ Hopkins. In the past it’s sometimes seemed that he also learned his timing from Hopkins, who was notorious for ignoring the 8- or 12-bar format and giving sidemen headaches in the process. Butler’s contrary notions of blues time have occasionally resulted in near-chaos; given his offbeat sense of humor and the pride he seems to take in his maverick reputation, you never knew whether it’s intentional or not.
The opener, “Funky Butt Lover,” isn’t funk at all but a grinding blues lope. This is the one cut on the LP that hasn’t been previously released; it features the late Sammy Lawhorn on guitar, adding a touch of grace to the raucous synergy achieved by the rest of the band. Lawhorn even augments the turnaround with a riff from Freddie King’s “Hide Away” before segueing into a solo that echoes the single-string dynamism of Guitar Slim, then escalating into a magnificent, early-morning dirty blues grind. “Funky Butt Lover” kicks you in all the right places like a Sunday-morning Maxwell Street jam: ragged around the edges, it sounds as if it’s fueled by an unholy mixture of whiskey, hambone stew, and Spanish fly, and it succeeds despite the raw audacity of its conception.
Perhaps the most unusual song on the album is “None of Nothing.” It’s an unaccompanied solo by Butler and it clearly shows his debt to Miller, who also recorded unaccompanied on occasion. Butler even incorporates some Miller-like finger snaps to complement his harp blowing. Butler’s lyrics, meanwhile, are as quirky and ambiguous as ever: “Once in my life I met a girl, never had none of nothing / And when I gave her some, I had trouble with the judge!”
