"Blow Your Harmonica, Son!"

I’ve been meaning to pen a little paean to one Otis “Lightnin’ Slim” Hicks, King of the Swamp Blues, for a while. I considered scribbling up a Record of the Week, but most of Slim’s work is the province of compilations and his true talent rested in sculpting jukebox-sized singles not LPs. That simple singular directive delivered in every articulation from an emphatic whoop to a lackadaisical drawl (probably chiefly dependent upon how much sauce had been swilled before and during the session) works like a war cry for Slim’s music. Whether the recipient was Schoolboy Cleve, Lazy Lester or some other mouth harp slinger, the declaration was a license to wail. The early Excello aesthetic was ideally suited to his chosen instrumentation and it’s these cuts that stand as his crowning contribution to the Blues. Ace Records four-disc (four and half, if you count the two-fer he shares with acolyte Whispering Slim) series gathers nearly every extant track Slim recorded at Excello between 1954 and 1964.

Referring to Slim’s early style as Spartan or anachronistic just doesn’t do justice its rawboned mien. It’s easily some of the most boiled down small combo blues of the era. Slim would set up shop in the Crowley studio, plugging in his Epiphone electric and twisting the volume knob to gain a strident overlay of amplification. Most of the early songs feature him with just harmonica and drums backing, rolling out smoldering slow drag shuffles that owe a deep debt to Lightnin’ Hopkins, and to a lesser degree, John Lee Hooker, but still exude an indelible Louisiana identity. Even on up-tempo boogies like his thinly veiled JLH cover “Just Made Twenty One”, Slim suggests the first part of his sobriquet is a misnomer as brittle riffs shave off his strings in dilatory cascades. Later on in his career, he mined the ore from the repertoires of other colleagues to the north, most notably Chessmen like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. “I’m Grown”, Slim’s take on Muddy Water’s “I’m a Man” makes a respectable run at the superlative Chess original. A throbbing fuzz bass line, clip-clop snare beat, and the seductive overdubbed interjections of one Carol Fran assist in blending just the right ratio of sex and despair.

Slim’s vocals, delivered in a nicotine-dusted croon or croak, weren’t pretty, but they were perfect at conveying the burned out, beaten down content of his songs. Most dealt with typical topics: love gone wrong, broken carburetors, draft notice deliveries, agricultural insolvency, and other harrowing tales of a rural Southern youth spent growing up black.

“Police took me down to jail,
and they tied me to the wall.
Thirty days I spent in jail
with my back turned to the wall.
If it wasn’t for bad luck,
Lightnin’ wouldn’t have no luck at all.”

Standard Delta blues fare there, but in Slim’s entreating, punch-drunk voice, it takes on a whole new emotional resonance. The other key ingredient was a liberal dousing of studio echo. The effect gave the performances shimmering depth and an even harder metallic edge. Here’s another choice sonnet from one of my favorites, punctuated by some of the nastiest biting guitar licks this side of Pat Hare and a snare downbeat that could drill holes in pig iron.

“Well if you’re lookin’ for a Daddy,
and want to treat him right,
give him lots of love and kisses every night.
Well I’m him, Baby, yes I’m him.
Give me your name and address sweet mama,
and Poor Lightnin’ will move in.”

The same shuffling cornerstone rhythm often gets recycled from track to track, but Slim somehow manages to make it sound enticing nearly every time. Take the stomping rave-up “It’s Mighty Crazy” with its punch press drumbeat, keening harmonica and jack knife guitar. The resulting hard rocking juke vibe offers the model vehicle for one of Slim’s stabs at double entendre lyrics. Check the lascivious beauty of this particular lyric:

“You know I had on some ol’ dirty clothes,
standing by a tub,
she pulled me right down in it,
and she began to rub.
It’s mighty crazy,
it’s mighty crazy,
it’s mighty crazy,
Just a keep on rubbin’ at the same ol’ thing.”

Contrast that performance with a version of “West Texas” taped two years earlier. On the latter, the drummer just uses brushes, but thanks to Schoolboy Cleve’s train whistle harmonica and Slim’s bent plectrum picking the track lacks nothing in the way of menace or volatility.

Label owner and producer J.D. Miller was a businessman, one with an ear-cocked constantly to unit sales and public trends. While he recorded a fair share of Slim in the bluesman’s preferred minimalist Froggy Bottom argot, he also recognized the commercial need to adapt with the changing times and tastes. Unfortunately, Slim’s idiosyncratic music didn’t mesh will with the added ingredients of organ, piano, bass, horns and fuller, more pop-friendly band charts. Still, many of those later sides, sprinkled throughout Ace’s series, exhibit their own charms as Slim continues to play in his rough-hewn, no-frills fashion accoutrements be damned. The checkerboard approach also makes it difficult to safely recommend one volume over another, but if forced to choose I’d probably start with It’s Mighty Crazy for it’s preponderance of early cuts and a great essay by Slim’s former manager Fred Reif. Dave Sax’s essay and full sessions details on the final volume Winter Time Blues are also valuable in gaining a gauge on Slim’s ascendancy and decline.

Slim’s recording fortunes waned in the mid-60s and he left Louisiana for points north in a general state of dissatisfaction. He settled Romeo, Michigan and found work at company called International Lock, Pipe and Junk where he worked as a laborer. Several years later while living in Pontiac he received an invitation to perform at the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. The concert and a subsequent date for Excello led to a minor resurgence in his popularity and a string of European tours. There isn’t a lot of material available from Slim’s second coming, but Blue Lightning, a live club date on the London-based Indigo imprint, gives a pretty accurate barometer of where he was at. Once again, his stripped down style isn’t the finest fit with the slick seven-piece band and there’s at least two guitarists too many on stage, but harmoncia player Laurie Garman picks up the mantle left by Cleve and Lester and responds to Slim’s signature entreaty with nary a hesitation at the gender-specific tag.