Otis Rush Right Place Wrong Time

Audio Beat Rated 4.5/5 Music, 4/5 Sound!
180g Vinyl! Remastered by Kevin Gray! Pressed at Pallas in Germany!
This 1976 album by blues singer and guitarist Otis Rush is regarded as one of his finest recordings even though it was not issued until five years after it was recorded.
The music was originally recorded in San Francisco in 1971 for Capitol Records who declined to release it at the time. It was originally released on the Bullfrog label after Rush bought the tapes.
As well as a selection of blues numbers, the album includes a cover of Tony Joe White's "Rainy Night In Georgia".
"Listening to this musical giant, it appears that Capitol did not have a sense of the power of a true blues musician. The album gets off to a rousing start on Ike Turner's "Tore Up". All of the classic blues chops are represented in this brisk, up tempo romp. Rush's guitar leads are precise and crisp.... Pure Pleasure Records has re-mastered Right Time, Wrong Place to 180-gram vinyl with sterling results. The stereo mix is very-balanced, with Rush's vocals and guitar always centered." - Robbie Gerson, www.audaud.com, 4 Stars!
"This recording session was not released until five years after it was done. One can imagine the tapes practically smoldering in their cases, the music is so hot. Sorry, there is nothing "wrong" about this blues album at all. Otis Rush was a great blues expander, a man whose guitar playing was in every molecule pure blues. On his solos on this album he strips the idea of the blues down to very simple gestures (i.e., a bent string, but bent in such a subtle way that the seasoned blues listener will be surprised). As a performer he opens up the blues form with his chord progressions and use of horn sections, the latter instrumentation again added in a wonderfully spare manner, bringing to mind a master painter working certain parts of a canvas in order to bring in more light. Blues fans who get tired of the same old song structures, riff, and rhythms should be delighted with most of Rush's output, and this one is among his best. Sometimes all he does to make a song sound unlike any blues one has ever heard is just a small thing -- a chord moving up when one expects it go down, for example. The production is particularly skilled, and the fact that Capitol Records turned this session down after originally producing it can only be reasonably accepted when combined with other decisions this label has made, such as turning down the Doors because singer Jim Morrison had "no charisma." This record doesn't mess around at all. The first track takes off like the man they fire out of a cannon at the end of a circus, a perceived climax swaggeringly representing just the beginning, after all. Some of the finest tracks are the ones that go longer than five minutes, allowing the players room to stretch. And that means more of Rush's great guitar playing, of course. For the final track he leaves the blues behind completely for a moving cover version of "Rainy Night in Georgia" by Tony Joe White." - Eugene Chadbourne, allmusic.com
"[A]s if great music alone were not quite enough, the quality of the sound is equally impressive... [Otis Rush] plays high-energy traditional blues, much of it self-composed. This album is certainly one of Rush’s finest achievements. It was recorded by Wally Heider for Capitol Records in Heider’s legendary (but now gone) San Francisco studio. Capitol took a pass on releasing the session, but five years later the tapes were released by Bullfrog Records after Rush purchased them from Capitol, Alligator Records producer Dick Shurman interceding to save this sizzling music from oblivion. Kevin Gray remastered the reissue and it sounds fabulous." - Dennis Davis, theaudiobeat.com, Music 4.5/5, Sound 4/5

Features:

• 180g Vinyl
• Pressed at Pallas in Germany
• Re-mastered by Kevin Gray

Musicians:

• Otis Rush, vocals, guitar
• Fred Burton, guitar
• John Kahn, bass
• Doug Kilmer, bass
• Bob Jones, drums
• Mark Naftalin, piano
• Ira Kamin, organ
• Hart McNee, alto saxophone
• Ron Stallings, tenor saxophone
• John Wilmeth, trumpet

Selections:

Side A
1. Tore Up
2. Right Place, Wrong Time
3. Easy Go
4. Three Times a Fool
5. Rainy Night In Georgia
Side B
1. Natural Ball
2. I Wonder Why
3. Your Turn To Cry
4. Lonely Man
5. Take A Look Behind