One of the true unsung heroes of Sun Records, Billy Lee Riley recorded two of the great unhinged classics of the rockabilly genre, “Flying Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Red Hot”. But even more than the other Sun artists who were not Elvis, Riley was the victim of bad timing and the label’s glut of talent. Though the jumping multi-instrumentalist (and his band the Little Green Men) played on numerous Sun sessions, behind the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison, Riley never had more than a regional hit on his own. In the ’60s, he moved to the West Coast, where he worked as a producer and sideman. And though he’d put out albums in Europe from time to time, 1994′s critically acclaimed Blue Collar Blues (HighTone) marked his first U.S. release in what seemed like forever.
Recorded at Sun Studios, Hot Damn! is essentially the second chapter in the resurrection of a musical legend. Born in 1933 in Pocahontas, Arkansas, Riley grew up in the cotton fields where his family worked. That’s where he first encountered the country blues, a style he lovingly explores here in a tribute to one of his early mentors, Arkansas bluesman Lightnin’ Leon Carter. Leaning to laid-back, harmonica-driven blues and punctuated by some rock ‘n’ rhythm numbers, Hot Damn! finds a groove somewhere between Memphis soul and the heavy, Excello Records-style Louisiana sound.
Moody covers such as “It Never Rains Till It Rains On You”, “Rainy Night In Georgia” and “Rainin’ In My Heart” conjure all kinds of atmospheric thunder and lightning. And Riley’s voice, which by turns recalls the weirdness of Charlie Feathers and sonorousness of Charlie Rich, is mellow gold incarnate. Like Rich’s Pictures And Paintings and Cash’s American Recordings, Riley’s Hot Damn! a mature masterpiece by yet another Sun Records alumnus.
