Luther Allison
I heard in Luther Allison’s 1995 album Blue Streak something that transcended all these contemporary cliches. The 57-year-old singer from the west side, who spent much of his career in Paris before returning to Chicago in the early 90s, for once had used guitar playing to augment his songs instead of the other way around. Allison’s fast riffs, a mixture of Jimi Hendrix rock, James Brown funk, and his own imaginative stops and starts, weren’t the whole point. They existed to serve the songs.
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Toward the end of “Cherry Red Wine,” for example, a song about a miserable alcoholic friend, Allison abruptly cuts off the music. There’s an emphatic moment of silence before his voice reappears. If she keeps it up, he sings, at the top of his lungs, “even the grass that grows on your grave will be cherry red.” The guitars and percussion return with a dramatic crash. It’s the sort of moment more often heard in punk.
I have nothing against showmanship. I’d rather watch Bishop than, say, Don Henley, a decent songwriter with absolutely no charisma. Bishop looks like the crazed mechanic who’d soup your Saturn into a stock car when all you’d wanted was an oil change. He’s a lot of fun to watch. It’s just that his never-ending solos, which are the guitar equivalent of Michael Bolton’s bombastic singing, get on my nerves.
