JOHNNY DRUMMER

Bad Attitude

Earwig

By Bill Dahl

          Although he relegated his traps to the closet long ago in favor of a more transportable electric keyboard (onstage, he straps the rig on like a guitar so he can roam whenever the urge hits him in mid-song), Chicago bluesman Thessex Johns still answers to the name of Johnny Drummer, a sobriquet he adopted when he joined pianist Lovie Lee’s band as its new timekeeper back in 1959. He would proceed to join guitarist Eddie King’s combo before exiting to do his own thing.

The Mississippi native’s fourth CD for co-producer Michael Frank’s Earwig label is a tightly produced affair that finds him deftly alternating between straight ahead in-the-pocket blues and horn-leavened soul-blues that should greatly appeal to Bobby Rush fans. In fact, the playful “Bit Her In The Butt” is laid over a lowdown groove redolent of Rush’s classic “Chicken Heads.”

Some of the Windy City’s top blues sessioneers—keyboardist Ronnie Hicks, guitarists Anthony Palmer and Sir Walter Scott, bassist Kenny Hampton, saxist Rodney “Hotrod” Brown, and trumpeter Kenny Anderson among them—keep the proceedings tight and steady-grooving behind Drummer, whose insistent, richly burnished vocals recall his late ‘60s stint as a front man on the South Side soul circuit (unfortunately, Drummer’s scattered recording sessions during that era for One-derful! and Billy “The Kid” Emerson’s label never made it to the pressing plant).

Drummer wrote all 13 songs on Bad Attitude (preceded in the Earwig catalog by 1999’s It’s So Nice, Unleaded Blues in 2001, and 2007’s Rockin’ In The Juke Joint), and he clearly has a knack for compositional pursuits, his witty lyrics frequently exhibiting memorable turns of phrase and unusual subject matter. He warns the public-at-large not to pre-judge him just because he lives in a trailer on “Don’t Call Me Trash,” conjures up some intriguing barnyard metaphors for “Another Rooster Is Pecking My Hen” (one of four tracks where he blows some pungent harmonica), and laments the hazards of contemporary telephone technology on “Star 69.”

If a song calls for a downhome flavor -- witness “My Woman My Money My Whiskey,” a harp-laden “Sure Sign Of The Blues,” and the solid-shuffling title track --Drummer brings the goods in no uncertain terms. But it’s this collection’s funkier outings that really connect; the horns dart atop Jeremiah Thomas’ crackling drums on the opening “Is It Love Or Is It Lust” (surely a question for the ages), and Hampton’s percolating bass line powers the relentless “One Size Fit All,” also decorated by punchy horns.

Frank’s accompanying liner notes describe Johnny as “long overdue for recognition.” On the strength of this CD, it’s impossible to argue with him.

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