JOHN HAMMOND
Push Comes To Shove
Back Porch

Probably his best recording since Wicked Grin, this new outing for John Hammond sees him celebrating 44 years in the business. Renowned for his distinctive interpretations of classic songs by all-time great blues masters, Hammond's last two releases heralded his emergence as a blues songwriter. While they contained some impressive material, these albums also featured Hammond crossing boundaries into country music over which he didn't display the same authority as he does with blues. Push Comes To Shove is more relevant to the John Hammond mould his world-wide fans adore.

Produced by Philadelphia soul/hip-hop artist and long-time Hammond fan Garrett Dutton (aka G. Love), it contains no less than five new Hammond originals plus interpretive pieces including Love's funky 'Butter', Tom Waits' 'Cold Water' and Dion Dimucci's 'If You Wanna Rock & Roll'. A decisively urban re-working of Freddie King's 'I'm Tore Down', complete with rap segments from Love, updates Hammond's earlier version. Recording in analogue, Love achieves a raunchy and rugged sound engaging Bruce Katz on piano and organ, Marty Ballou on bass and Stephen Hodges on drums behind Hammond's passionate vocals, guitar and harmonica.

Elsewhere on this three-quarter-hour long disc, the perennial New York City bluesman pours his unbridled emotion into Junior Wells' minor key slow blues 'Come On In This House', Lightnin' Slim's swamp stomper 'Mean Ol' Lonesome Train' and another revival of Little Walter's Chicago shuffle 'Everything Gonna Be Alright'. This is no watered-down, over-produced and commercially-focussed blues project. While Hammond is a progressive artist willing to push the envelope, here he stays true to his calling playing some of his meanest ever lowdown, dirty blues.

Al Hensley