How'd A White Boy Get The Blues? : Popa Chubby : Review : Rolling Stone

If this bald, copiously tattooed guitar hero from the Bronx didn't try so hard, he might communicate a fraction of the soul he so desperately wants people to know he has. Ted "Popa Chubby" Horowitz can jam, as he proves by blasting the amps with endless Chicago-style electric-guitar solos through White Boy's first three tracks. He pauses for air on "Time Is Killing Me," which intends to be a Stax-style Sixties ballad (with cooing from female backup singers and everything) -- but given Chubby's croak, it lands at the median between John Hiatt's goofy blues-rock and an oversung Matchbox Twenty hit. Chubby is fun when he taps into his considerable personality, especially on a rambling, seven-minute, vaudevillian story-song lamenting the disparity between New York's crack and marijuana punishments. ("I want my city back!") Otherwise, it's guitar for everybody, whether your thing is Chet Atkins ("Goin' Down to Willie's") or Luther Allison ("Black Hearted Woman").

STEVE KNOPPER
(August 13, 2001)