“Once in a great while, there comes along a recording that throws a reviewer into a palsied seizure, simply because he does not have sufficient command of the language to give adequate praise.” So wrote an anonymous scribe reviewing the Mighty Hannibal’s Vietnam war saga “Hymn No. 5” upon its release. And I couldn’t muster a more accurate summation of this 28-cut hunk of soul frenzy. By way of comparison, Hannibalism! should be spoken of in the same breath as Norton’s recent Rudy Ray Moore collection, Hully Gully Fever. It’s got the same succinct, artist-penned liner notes that transport you back in time to the dressing rooms, bus stations, after hours joints, clubs and theaters that simply define the history of black show business. Its got the photos. And most importantly, it’s got the grooves.
From Sammy Davis, Jr., to James Brown to Stokely Carmichael, Hannibal hung with ’em all, but his top running partners were best buddies Larry Williams and Johnny “Guitar” Watson. “I Need A Woman” sounds like a long-lost Watson track from the early sixties, utilizing the same distorted guitar over a backdrop of perfectly arranged strings à la Johnny’s “Cuttin’ In.” But it’s the voice—glimmering with that electric crackle that Watson and Williams also used to such success—that really does it, testifying to that magical osmosis that only occurs when musicians are developing and growing around one another.
Hannibal describes his work as “message music” and whether it’s a hopeless soldier’s plea sung from inside a fox hole (“Hymn No. 5”), the story of a junkie finding Jesus (“The Truth Shall Make You Free”) or a sorrowful father pleading to his prostitute daughter (“Party Life”), he more than aptly proves that he was a pioneer in telling it as it was—and is–in graphic high relief. But he can also intimate on hopeless love like Solomon Burke (“The Biggest Cry,” “Fall In Love With Me) or wind it up like Nathaniel Mayer, all distorted guitar and drums, on dancehall workouts like “Fishin’ Pole,” and “Shame, Shame, Shame.”
Hannibal is a soul master supreme utterly worthy of rediscovery. It doesn’t get much better than this.
