Hot Rize cover

Hot Rize

Hot Rize

Album · 1979 · Flying Fish FF 206

Hot Rize recorded its first album at Colorado Sound Recording in Denver in early 1979, and Flying Fish released it that year as FF 206. The band had started playing together in January 1978. Nick Forster joined on electric bass that April, which let Charles Sawtelle move from bass to guitar, and the four-man lineup on this record stayed together for more than twenty years: Tim O’Brien on mandolin and fiddle, Pete Wernick on banjo, Sawtelle on guitar and Forster on bass. The band produced the album with Victor Garrett, and the sleeve carries a dedication to Lester Flatt.

Band originals sit beside songs from other writers. O’Brien wrote “Nellie Kane”; Wernick and O’Brien wrote “This Here Bottle”; O’Brien, Forster and Wernick wrote “Midnight on the Highway”; and Wernick and Bob Applebaum wrote the instrumental “Powwow the Indian Boy.” The borrowed material includes Kirk McGee’s “Blue Night,” Ola Belle Reed’s “High on a Mountain,” Don Reno’s “Country Boy Rock ’n’ Roll,” and Jimmy Martin and Paul Williams’s “Prayer Bells of Heaven.” “Ninety-Nine Years (and One Dark Day)” is credited to Jesse Fuller, with arrangement and lyrics by O’Brien.

O’Brien sings most of the leads, and Sawtelle takes the lead on J. D. Hutchison’s “Ain’t I Been Good to You.” Forster sings harmony on several songs, and all four voices come together on “Prayer Bells of Heaven” and “Standing in the Need of Prayer.” Four tracks are instrumentals: “Empty Pocket Blues” (Greg Dearth), “Powwow the Indian Boy,” “Old Dan Tucker” and Buddy Durham’s “Durham’s Reel.”

Tracklist

  1. 1 Blue Night Source Recording Kirk McGee · key B · 121 bpm 2:23
  2. 2 Empty Pocket Blues 2:21
  3. 3 Nellie Kane Source Recording Tim O’Brien · key E · 123 bpm 2:58
  4. 4 High on a Mountain Source Recording Ola Belle Reed · key G · 101 bpm 3:06
  5. 5 Ain’t I Been Good to You Source Recording John Hutchison · key F# · 117 bpm 2:21
  6. 6 Powwow The Indian Boy 3:06
  7. 7 Prayer Bells of Heaven alt version 2:57
  8. 8 This Here Bottle 2:41
  9. 9 Ninety Nine Years and One Dark Day Source Recording Jesse Fuller · key B · 111 bpm 3:08
  10. 10 Old Dan Tucker 1:21
  11. 11 Country Boy Rock and Roll alt version 2:07
  12. 12 Standing in the Need of Prayer alt version 2:40
  13. 13 Durham's Reel 3:07
  14. 14 Midnight on the Highway Source Recording Nick Forster, Pete Wernick, Tim O’Brien · key F · 125 bpm 2:44

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