Poor Robben Ford, he’s just too dadgummed good for his own good. Both a versatile and virtuosic guitar player, Ford can sound at home in so many different styles that he’s often struggled to find one that would give him an identifiable imprint.
To be sure, everyone who knows guitar knows that Robben is a god, but is he a blues god? Or fusion god? Or is it rock? Throughout his thirty-plus year career, he always seemed to come back to the blues, however. And that’s fine by me, because he can sure play it (and contrary to what a few detractors might say, his singing passes muster, too).
About 15 years ago, Robben made his firmest commitment yet to that genre when he formed the three piece band rhe Blue Line with bassist Roscoe Beck and drummer Tom Brechtlein and they put out three solid blues oriented records culminating in 1995’s near masterpiece Handful of Blues. Following that gem, Ford jumped around from style to style with each succeeding release, yielding varying results. Soul-inflected vocal rock was the theme of Supernatural (1999), and for what it set out to do, it actually succeeded pretty well.
Unfortunately, fans of the Blue Line found nothing in that album they could get excited about until he mercifully threw them a bone on the very last track. It so happens that this bone has a lot of meat hanging from it. As a big fan of the music of Paul Butterfield (he later released a Butterfield tribute album along with members of his family), Ford chose to cover Butterfield’s 1964 composition “Lovin’ Cup.”
Paul Butterfield’s original featured Mike Bloomfield’s lead guitar following each sung line with a mini-lick. Sam Lay’s cymbal ride underscored a typical mid-’60s rock shuffle.
Meanwhile, the leader himself provides muscular vocals. This version was one of the very first blues-rock recordings and provides a nice demonstration of why the Butterfield Blues Band was maybe the best band on this side of the Atlantic at that time, save for perhaps The Byrds.
As good as “Butter” and his boys treated that song, Robben Ford manages to best it in nearly aspect, except for the vocals. Granted, Ford can’t sing it quite as well; his voice is too thin to match Butterfield’s. Nonetheless, he gives it a credible performance by giving it sneering attitude befitting the lyrics about lusting over some trashy girl who “doesn’t wash her hair or wash her clothes.”
[SOMETHING ELSE! INTERVIEW: Robben Ford joined us for a Something Else! Sitdown to discuss his back-to-roots album ‘Bringing It Back Home,’ Joni Mitchell, George Harrison … and Kiss?]
While Lay laid down a decent rhythm in the 1964 version, that shuffle beat is kid’s play for a veteran skins beater like Vinnie Colaiuta and he adds several more wrinkles that propels the song, rather than merely keep it going.
But hey, let’s face it, it’s Robben’s guitar that’s the centerpiece of this version. The leader sings a verse and then gives us a teaser solo. After the second verse, the real solo is launched at the 1:55 mark and then it’s 65 seconds of a swaggering, cliché free blues-rock guitar clinic. Enough to make you forget The Late, Great Bloomfield if just for a minute and all in a day’s work for Ford.
The energy that Robben Ford and his bandmates give the song (especially Colaiuta) makes this the kind of blues you want to boogie to. And in spite of the veneer of sophistication that Ford manages to slide into even the grittiest of blues standards, the spirit of Butterfield’s version is alive and well in this version.
Damn those Blue Line partisans, I still like the rest of the decidedly un-bluesy Supernatural. But at the same time I have to concede that when you get through the whole album you’ll find that the highlight is sitting there right at the end.
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