For anyone unfamiliar with the work of Otis Rush his new album should be a revelation. A kind of latter-day Robert Johnson, he is, quite simply, the most gifted of contemporary blues singers. His early work for Cobra, recorded from 1956-58 when Rush was just 22 or 23 years old, brings together taut, constricted vocals, brilliant and original compositions, fluid guitar lines and the same kind of soul-wrenching involvement which characterized Johnson's epochal blues.

The new album, Cold Day in Hell, is a deeply troubled work. On numbers like "You're Breaking My Heart" and the title cut, which between them last over 14 minutes, there is a sense of betrayal and bleak despair which is almost too painful to endure. Here Rush seemingly abandons all artistic distance; the barrier between life and art is down. On his classic "All Your Love I Miss Loving," the six-minute jam only serves to extend the lyrical, or elegiac, sense of the song; on "Society Woman" there is an apt tribute to T-Bone Walker, softly melancholy, uniquely personal. The rest of the album consists of two dispensable R&B and jazz-tinged instrumentals, an uptempo Junior Wells-type dance track and "Mean Old World," which slows to the point of anomie and is ultimately sunk by a perverse and persistent bass line.

It's a very odd album in a number of ways. Despite the time and obvious care that went into it there is a tentative, strangely unfinished quality about the music itself, as if lyrics were improvised at the last moment, as if sometimes Rush reaches out and snatches musical ideas—even familiar ones—out of the air. This can be particularly effective emotionally; it is in fact an old device of gospel music and the blues, where stuttering or lyric repetition indicates a troubled and divided soul. In this case it is effective about half the time; the other half things fall apart, as musicians run into each other (the dissonant bass, frequent problems of intonation, confused fadeouts, shaky finales); a not particularly felicitous phrase ("You use me just like a tool") is seized upon and repeated and repeated; or Rush, who possesses one of the most mellifluous voices in the blues, with a unique ability to break into an effortless falsetto, howls like a dog. Production work, too, is erratic, with one session producing all the best cuts ("You're Breaking My Heart," "All Your Love," "Cold Day in Hell"). The rest, despite the presence of Mighty Joe Young on second guitar, features that errant bass and a sound that is cluttered at best.

More than anything else, the album's main flaw seems to be a grasping for greatness, as if, after a seven-year absence from the recording studio, the significance of the occasion suddenly hit Otis Rush full force and rendered him not voiceless but somewhat tongue-tied. This is understandable, given the disastrous nature of his recording career, but hopefully next time he will be able to sneak up on the occasion with more circumspection and greater self-confidence.

As it is, Cold Day in Hell is still a great album. For all its flaws it has a compelling force of its own, and for anyone who has not had the chance to listen to Otis Rush it is an indispensable introduction to the sound of the blues today. (RS 210)

PETER GURALNICK