No greaser quiff, no black leather pants, though with the inevitable bad leg limp, but he still doesn’t sound as if he means maybe while be-bopin’ all over the American musical legacy, even though it’s the beginning of the ’70s already. The two Kama Sutra albums (’70/’71) paired up for this release, are proofs as good as any.
Among others (such as Chris Darrow for example), the back up is provided by three thirds of Sir Douglas Quintet, with the pair of keyboardist Augie Meyers-written tunes actually being what I consider for highlights of the set. Slow Times Comin’ is walkin’-talkin’ kind of a Dylan blues, that could’ve easily fit the Highway 61 sessions, and If Only You Could See Me Today is just “old stinking rock’n’roll, funky and lowdown, and pulled right from the bottom of the heart” by way of Creedence Clearwater Revival, who Gene cites as soulmates himself.
Tush Hog delivers some more stripped down r’n’b, that doesn’t really get too far from his own brand of vintage rockabilly after all, and even though he says that he “could never be a straight country artist”, there’s a couple of pretty straight forward examples of him being exactly that, though his take on Lonesome Me does get kind of swamp-ish, in a late’60s-era Dale Hawkins way.
On a gentler, sweet Gene Vincent side of the approach, the liners’ description of his original The Day The World Turned Blue as “sounding like a mix between Buddy Holly’s Everyday and The Velvet Underground’s Sunday Morning” is as close as possible.
With the second of the two albums released just months before his death, Gene made sure to prove that the “hard rockin’, rock and rollin’ life” was all that he’d known until the very last day of his life.
[Released by Rev-Ola 2008]
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