Jake Thackery

Ex-Nighthawks guitarist Jimmy Thackery has been playing his own brand of blues-tinged rock as a solo artist for some twenty years now (he left the Nighthawks in 1987) and there's no denying that he's a first-class guitarist with a sharp ear for tone and a knack for perfectly placed fills and evocative leads. His quavering, shaky voice is a problem, though, and while he conjures up the feel of an old veteran country singer on some of his slower numbers, his singing often lacks the punch, power and sass of his guitar playing on the more upbeat material. You don't buy a Jimmy Thackery album for the vocals, though, and fans of his crisp guitar work won't be disappointed at all with Solid Ice, which comes packed with wonderful riffs and multi-tracked leads.

Not a prolific composer, Thackery's strength lies in strong arrangements that make other people's material his own. He covers Stevie Ray Vaghan's "Rude Mood," and one suspects there will be comparisons made in this direction. His solos burn the motel down on Luther Johnson's "Lickin' Gravy," and he manages a more than credible job on Hendrix's "Red House." Of the two self-penned numbers, the title track is a convincing boogie driven by an ultra-cool, echoed, chicken-scratch guitar riff, while "Getting Tired of Waiting" offers a more traditional blues shuffle.

Jimmy Thackery's eight CDs for the Blind Pig label rank with the finest work of his career. A passionate blues guitarist and an effective singer, Thackery brings creativity and a freshness to his renditions of blues, blues ballads, and near-blues. This sampler draws its 13 selections from the eight releases, putting the emphasis on the leader. Thackery is heard in guitar-bass-drums trios for eight of the selections and joined by various guests (including one appearance apiece by guitarists Lonnie Brooks, Duke Robillard, and John Mooney) on the other five tracks. The Essential Jimmy Thackery lives up to its name and serves as a perfect introduction to the bluesman's music.

Jimmy Thackery's eight CDs for the Blind Pig label rank with the finest work of his career. A passionate blues guitarist and an effective singer, Thackery brings creativity and a freshness to his renditions of blues, blues ballads, and near-blues. This sampler draws its 13 selections from the eight releases, putting the emphasis on the leader. Thackery is heard in guitar-bass-drums trios for eight of the selections and joined by various guests (including one appearance apiece by guitarists Lonnie Brooks, Duke Robillard, and John Mooney) on the other five tracks. The Essential Jimmy Thackery lives up to its name and serves as a perfect introduction to the bluesman's music.

Jimmy Thackery created a distinctively raw, powerful guitar style and established a reputation as a spectacular soloist who is widely considered to be one of the finest guitar players of his generation. These newly re-mastered recordings chosen from three long out of print albums dating from 1992 to 1998 represent one of the most creative periods of his illustrious career.

One of the most striking and strangely moving moments onJake Xerxes Fussell’s gorgeous Good and Green Again—an album, his fourth and most recent, replete with such dazzling moments—arrives at its very end, with the brief words to the final song “Washing-ton.” “General Washington/Noblest of men/His house, his horse, his cherry tree, and him,” Fussell sings, after a hushed introductory passage in which his trademark percussively fingerpicked Telecaster converses lacily with James Elkington’s parlor piano. That’s the entire lyrical content of the song, which proceeds to float away on orchestral clouds of French horn, trumpet, and strings, until it simply stops, suddenly evaporating, vanishing with no fade or trace, no resolution to its sorrowful minor-key chord progression, just silence and stillness and stark presidential absence. It feels like the end of a film, or the cold departure of a ghost, and is unlike anything else Jake has recorded.