Jack Owens & Buddy Spires – It Must Have Been the Devil (Testament)

The tincture of influence can be a burdensome thing, an indelible mark even when its presence is more mirage than reality. Stitt had to deal with the Olympus-sized shadow that was Bird. Brötzmann’s been living down a knee-jerk Ayler analogue for decades, despite his contention that they developed their styles contemporaneously. In the realm of the blues there’s Jack Owens and Skip James, both longtime residents of Bentonia, Mississippi. James remains the household name, primarily for the string of epochal “race” sides he waxed for Paramount in 1930. Those few who have even heard of Owens often first hear him as an impersonator or at best, disciple. Closer listening divulges both subtle and substantial disparities in their styles. Owens reminds me more of hill country contemporaries like Junior Kimbrough and Robert Belfour, particularly on this 1970 album for Pete Welding’s Testament imprint. He hardly seems concerned with conventional song constraints or strict tunings, spooling out spidery, undulating guitar lines that scuttle along for durations up to several times that of the typical shellac 78. His vocals, a weird blend of adenoidal wail and sorrowful rasp don’t match the eldritch falsetto of Skip, but carry instead their own bundle of broken aspirations in dryly suspiring form. Confrere Buddy Spires adds haunting mouth harp fills and the pair shapes improvisations that sound at once ramshackle and rococo. Their renderings of “Good Morning Little School Girl” and “Catfish Blues” reduce claims of unoriginality to little more than burnt hog moss. Owens even has the huevos to cover James “Cherry Ball Blues”, divested here of its genre signifier and significantly looser in design. Asked to chose, I’d still readily pick Skip, but Owens is more than worth a lingering gander.