Post Description

Long John Hunter is a musician who defies easy categorization. Although generally classified as a Texas blues guitarist, his approach incorporates other musical elements into the mix, as convincingly illustrated by the tracks on Ooh Wee Pretty Baby! Much of this can be explained by the fact that Long John developed his distinctive sound in relative isolation - not even in Texas, but across the border in Mexico, of all places. Born in Louisiana in 1931 to itinerant sharecropping parents, Hunter spent his teenage years in Arkansas before an eventual move to southeast Texas. During the early 1950s, he attended a B.B. King concert at the insistence of some friends, an event that he identifies as the inspiration for him to pick up the guitar and become a professional musician. After forming a small combo, he played regularly at the clubs around his home in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area. A single recorded at a local radio station, "Crazy Girl" b/w "She Used to Be My Woman," received significant regional airplay and caught the ear of Don Robey, the owner of Duke Records. Hunter ended up signing a contract with him, a move that he would soon regret since the label failed to release any followup recordings. To this day, he believes that Robey brought him into the fold simply to stifle any competition the guitarist might offer to established Duke artists such as Bobby "Blue" Bland, Junior Parker, and Johnny Ace. Nevertheless, Hunter was making decent money by playing in smaller venues after relocating to Houston, where Duke was based. By 1957, he had successfully pressured Robey into voiding his contract and, at the suggestion of some other musicians, relocated to remote El Paso, where there was considerably more opportunity and fewer musicians with whom to compete. However, it was in the Mexican border city of Juarez (a one-time popular destination for American tourists before it became the front line in that country's drug cartel wars) where Hunter really made his mark. Not long after his arrival in the area, he earned a residency at a popular nightspot called the Lobby Cafe, where he played regularly for the next 13 years or so. His band's personnel included a singer who had to be roughed up to get him to perform, a narcoleptic second guitarist, and non-English-speaking bartenders who had received crash courses on their respective instruments. By his own admission, Hunter came into town as a B.B. King imitator, but necessity required him to develop a raw form of rhythm & blues that was uniquely his own.

 1 El Paso Rock 
 2 Ride With Me Baby  
 3 Border Town Blues    
 4 Flippin' Fingers   
 5 Midnight Stroll    
 6 Hey, Mrs. Jones    
 7 Shuffle Out   
 8 School Girl   
 9 So Long   
 10 Scratch   
 11 Betty Lou   
 12 Strange Feeling   
 13 Grandma    
 14 I Wanna Love You   
 15 Ole Red   
 16 Stop What You're Doing 
 17 Ole Rattler    
 18 Slash  
 19 Come On   
 20 I Don't Care
 21 Betty Lou 

Label Norton
Orig Year 1999
Discs 1
Release Date Aug 24, 1999
Studio/Live Studio
Mono/Stereo Mixed
Producer Calvin Boles; Calvin Boles & Gang
Recording Time 47 minutes

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