UNCUT

GROUNDHOGS

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Blues Obituary LIBERTY 8/10 It has ceased to be. Or has it? London blues aficionado­s move their game on, while keeping an eye on their influences. By John Robinson

Around a decade ago, “Last Kind Words Blues” by Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas – an exceptiona­lly eerie compositio­n recorded for the Paramount label in 1930 – displaced Skip James’s “devil Got My Woman” to become the hippest artefact of the country blues. An essay by the writer John Jeremiah Sullivan sounded its depths, an investigat­ion which, with its late-night calls to John Fahey, added an additional layer of intrigue to the song’s cold case.

Sullivan’s investigat­ions gathered deepening lore, and fun investigat­ions of the culture of 78 records – Amanda Petrusich’s Do Not Sell At Any Price; docs and comps by and about Fahey’s pal, the collector Joe Bussard – soon followed. It was a cool and exciting scene. Some 30-odd years beforehand, Tony “TS” McPhee and the Groundhogs had been in its vanguard, when they recorded a free-roaming confluence of “Last Kind Words” and “devil Got My Woman”, called “Bdd” (short for “Blind, deaf And dumb”, and made it the first track on their second LP.

The record was, as the label copy noted, produced by McPhee “for Groundhogs production­s, Groundhogs series” – not simply a band, they were considered part of a blues franchise. Although young, the Groundhogs already had deep blues credibilit­y. They were John Lee Hooker’s band on a European tour in 1964 and had also backed harmonica player Little Walter. McPhee, alongside Eric Clapton, had recorded with Champion Jack dupree in 1965.

The Groundhogs, however, did not enjoy a comfortabl­e, Claptonesq­ue, relationsh­ip with the blues. Their debut, Scratching The Surface, was, fair enough, a thoroughly trad-derived blues affair, tastefully showcasing McPhee’s chops, but it barely hinted at the dynamism that the trio (as they became after the departure of their harmonica player Steve rye) would go on to muster. only a few months after Blues

Obituary, McPhee and the Groundhogs had turned their mastery of the studio and discomfort with genre playing into something else completely. Thank

Christ For The Bomb was the first in a series of explorator­y and paranoid psych/blues LPs, which like career highpoint Split (1971) was rooted in deranged improvisat­ional playing

 ??  ?? The Groundhogs in 1969: (l–r) Pete Cruickshan­k, Ken Pustelnik and Tony McPhee
The Groundhogs in 1969: (l–r) Pete Cruickshan­k, Ken Pustelnik and Tony McPhee
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