Wet Willie is the young five-man group originally from Mobile, Alabama, that's been touring with the Allman Brothers Band lately, and winning a bunch of new friends. The group's admirers note a similarity between their boys and the Stones. The only obvious reason for the comparison is Jimmy Hall, the band's lead singer. Hall has a voice strut and an air of raucous elegance not unlike Jagger. But Hall, being a native Southeasterner, is a lot closer to the source of Mick's style than Mick himself, so his slurred inflection is natural, not studied. His voice is rangier than Jagger's, too. At times, there's even a hint of "Wooly-Bully" era Sam the Sham, and that's fine, too. He may be barely out of his teens, but Jimmy Hall has already acquired the power -like Jagger and Rod Stewart- to kick a tune into action simply by biting into it. The problem is, this album doesn't give him a whole lot to chew on. If the album moves at all, it's because of the singer, not the song.

Actually the rest of the band has a way of getting the most out of its material, too, which helps disguise the fact that there's not much there. The arrangements, in fact, are worthy of much better songs than the ones they embellish here. Oh, there's nothing really awful about the songs (most written by guitarist Ricky Hirsch and nonmember Frank Friedman), if you don't take lines like "I was sunk by a hunk of your funk" to heart. But they're not gonna take you anywhere you haven't been many times before.

When a performer is unable to create unconventional or clever material himself, he'd be wise to emulate people like Three Dog Night, Stewart, and the Byrds, who record the best tunes they can find at any given time, no matter where they come from. It's worth noting that the only previously recorded song on the record, Jimmy Reed's "Shame, Shame, Shame," here shines to a degree out of proportion to its worth, simply because it has so little competition.

With a singer of Jimmy Hall's caliber and a knack for lean, driving arrangements, Wet Willie might be better off transforming known material into something fresh, than trying to breathe life into stillborn song ideas.

It's obvious that Wet Willie is a really solid young band with some positive distinguishing characteristics. So let's hope these guys didn't relegate themselves to the minor leagues just because they don't have an outstanding composer or lyricist in their midst. Not everybody can be the Rolling Stones.

And come to think of it, even the Stones started out doing other people's songs. (RS 93)

BUD SCOPPA