Otis Rush

Rush has been the bluesfan's bluesman for years, but this album--recorded live in Hibiya Park, Tokyo, a/k/a Pepper's Lounge East--is the first time I've been able to hear why. Reason's simple--lots of room for his guitar. Rush is a "good singer" with a "good instrument"--sweet, penetrating, slurred--but the words aren't where his soul goes. It goes into the form itself. Like B.B. King's, only less predictably by now, his solos expand upon the Chicago verities in almost jazzlike flights without ever transgressing against them. (Grade: B+)