Art imitates life, life imitates art. Apter words can’t be chosen when speaking of the blues guitar whammy of Long John Hunter. In describing the crazed atmosphere at the Lobby Bar in Juarez, Mexico where he held down a 13 year residency, Hunter states simply, “if it didn’t happen at the Lobby, it just didn’t happen in life. That’s the yes and no of it.”

Prior to his rafter swingin’, Stratocaster slingin’ mayhem at the wild border town watering hole where he forged his pyrotechnical musical vision, Hunter and two buddies had taught themselves what they could and with no musical experience whatsoever, stormed bandstands around the Beaumont/Port Arthur region of East Texas. Upon hearing that El Paso featured “many outstanding women and no one to play the blues for them,” Hunter was brimming with self confidence. With a lifetime of rockin’ ahead of him, he lit out for the border. After a chance jam session landed him a gig at the Lobby he found himself with no sidemen, yet several Mexican bartenders who spoke no English but “really wanted to play music”. Showing his newfound friends the rudiments, within weeks he was ruling the roost with what he describes as “one heckuva band”.

With nobody else to jam with or learn from, Hunter’s career in Juarez developed and existed in a vaccuum. Thrown together, all of these unlikely circumstances created an individual ferocity that, when the smoke cleared, had heavily influenced every musician to come out of West Texas, most notably Buddy Holly and Bobby Fuller. Here we have the recordings that leave no doubt as to why. Searing guitar instrumentals and stomping shuffles, minor-keyed R&B and whooping, yodeling hillbilly blues; Hunter’s high vocals and overdriven licks are propelled by a band whose lack of linguistic communication is matched only by a musical rapport so Sterno-induced it could blow the roof off of any club, south or north of the border. Rock on, Long John!