Artist: Rush, Otis
Label: Bullfrog Records
Release: 1976
Duration: 40.44
Rating: 4.5/5
An interesting story wove itself around “Right Place, Wrong Time” in the stretch between the album’s creation and its eventual release. Even though Otis Rush “laid down” the finished tracks on tape back in 1971, the album only saw the light of day a good five years later. The main culprits for the delay can be found among the people in charge at Capitol, who first rejected the album, claiming it was too weak and therefore not worth the energy and effort the gentlemen would have had to spend on distributing it properly. The lack of business maturity, and of course common sense too, is plain as day here, especially considering this is one of the most influential albums in the history of the blues. Otis was thus forced to buy back the recordings of his own work, which he later entrusted to the Bullfrog label, where “Right Place, Wrong Time” finally came out in 1976.
Otis Rush’s playing style is unique, admittedly maybe not as spectacular as, say, his contemporary Buddy Guy’s, but it’s still a vital, sturdy derivative of primal guitar blues that, with Right Place, Wrong Time, fearlessly dictates the evolutionary currents of electric blues. Otis’s “solutions” are simple, roughly chopped melodic maneuvers, often built on the expressiveness of a single note, which, with a simple bend of the string, keenly shifts shades of mood. Otis often flirts with chord turns and structures that are unconventional for classic blues standards, happily leaving us guessing which way he’ll swerve next. The pulse of his playing is unsteady, but in any case heavily dependent on the mood of the vocals, which he gladly moves in lockstep with. The latter could be called typically bluesy, with a barely noticeable but still sufficiently composed touch of soul-flavored leaning.
Otis’s approach is honest and unforced, and from the opening bar onward he follows only his emotions. The first in the record’s series of salvos of lewd creative spurts fuses into a one-of-a-kind blues creation in the opener “Tore Up”, which hits right away, armed with the full expressive essence of Otis Rush! The follow-up with the title track “Right Place, Wrong Time” comes across as much tamer to an untrained ear, which is deceptive, because behind the sonic backdrop of superbly placed horn arrangements and the constant “bickering” between the Hammond organ and the guitar, in front of which a fearsome vocal delivery runs its monodrama, lies a string of emotional outbursts from a permanently damaged soul. “Three Times A Fool” dutifully follows its predecessor’s example, with a bit more tempo the recognizable moral indecency of the fertility-boosting dance “Natural Ball” ensnares us, while “Lonely Man” backs up the claim that Otis does just fine without his six-string “weaponry” too, i.e. when he persuasively addresses us with nothing but the grasping sharpness of his voice.
“Right Place, Wrong Time” undoubtedly belongs among the most convincing showcases of Otis Rush’s creative vitality. It’s an album that cemented the blues legend, just when the genre most needed reviving, as one of the leading standard-bearers of the Chicago generation of blues. The album holds an important place in the evolution of blues music, which, after the transitional period of the late ’60s, entered its darkest era, admittedly not in terms of creativity but certainly through the lens of popularity. You could say that Otis Rush, following Freddie King’s lead, is one of the main culprits for reactivating the blues barometer, which only later generations of blues musicians pushed on the final run to boiling point.
Lineup
Otis Rush: vocals, guitar
Fred Burton: guitar
Ira Kamin: organ
Mark Naftalin: piano
John Kahn: bass
Doug Kilmer: bass
Bob Jones: drums
Hart McNee: alto saxophone
Ron Stallings: tenor saxophone
John Wilmeth: trumpet
Production
Nick Gravenites & Otis Rush
Tracklist
1. Tore Up
2. Right Place, Wrong Time
3. Easy Go
4. Three Times A Fool
5. Rainy Night in Georgia
6. Natural Ball
7. I Wonder Why
8. Your Turn To Cry
9. Lonely Man
10. Take A Look Behind
