HUTTO & ALEXANDER
By Kelley Simms
By Rosalind-Cummings
Yeates
J.B. Hutto, circa 1982
Photo courtesy of Boston Blues Society
C
hicago boasts such a gold mine of
blues masters that some of the earlier
contributors to the sound get overshadowed by their more notable counterparts. Many players who recorded and
played for local fans and didn't get much
national attention. In the post war heyday of
Chicago blues, hundreds of musicians made
a steady living playing South side and West
Side bars, earning reputations that rarely
traveled north of Roosevelt Road. Although
J.B. Hutto performed nationwide and did
European tours, his bombastic slide guitar
skills were most known during his weekly
gigs at Turner's Blue Lounge at 39th and
Indiana, during the '60s. The uncle of Little
Ed of Little Ed and The Blues Imperials and
lesser known than another Augusta, Georgia
bred J.B., named James Brown, J.B. managed
to capture the attention of any listener that
had the chance to catch his raucous live
show. Delmark has supplied a great service
for those not around during J.B. Hutto's
Turner's years, with a reissue and re-mastering of the classic 1968 album, Hawk Squat
(Delmark).
Bursting with a raw blues sound and layered with enough ambiance for listeners to
almost smell the smoke and hear the rowdy
crowd response, the 18-track CD includes six
previously unreleased songs and ample liner