Neil Spencer 

Otis Taylor: Hey Joe Opus, Red Meat review – a visceral tour de force

Otis Taylor and guests recast an American classic as the centrepiece of this memorably gaunt collection
  
  

Otis Taylor Edinburgh Jazz And Blues Festival
Otis Taylor on stage in Edinburgh, 2014. Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns via Getty Images Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns via Getty Images

The Colorado bluesman has made Hey Joe a theme tune and live staple. Here the song made famous by Jimi Hendrix (with whom a young Taylor jammed) becomes the centrepiece of a gaunt meditation on betrayal and murder, cast in Taylor’s customary “trance blues” mode; guitar drones shot through with lines of cornet, fiddle and banjo and fronted by his growling declamations. Talented guests help dramatise the album’s arid, wild west soundscapes; guitarist Warren Haynes psychs out, Hendrix-style, on two versions of Hey Joe, with singer Langhorne Slim playing the part of gun-toting Joe. A visceral tour de force.

 

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