Journey Through The Past 23 : Eddie Hinton : Very Extremely Dangerous and Hard Luck Guy

I first heard of Eddie Hinton after reading about him in Say It One More Time for the Broken Hearted which I bought for about two quid at a discount book store in Soho.  At the time I was just really getting into Dan Penn's music and I noted many references to Dan in the bibliography.   So the combination of the price and those references were enough for me to pick up the book.

One of the "characters" that Barney rated highly in the book was a guitarist called Eddie Hinton whose song We Got It made it into Barney's top 20 Country Soul songs.

Eddie was one of the session guitarists at the Muscle Shoals Studio and had grown up with the likes of Duane Allman  and apparently taught Otis Redding guitar. It may have been that Otis also taught Eddie a few singing tricks as Eddie sang like a white Otis.   Eddie wrote a few songs for Otis but his best known song would have to be the Dusty Springfield/UB40 classic Breakfast In Bed.

By the time I had heard of him he had already died after a long struggle with drugs, psychological and health
problems.  The first CD of his I bought was a posthumous release curated by Dan Penn.  He took a lot of demos and half finished songHard Luck Guy  sounds like a well conceived full album.
s and like Jake and Elwood got the band back together to finish them off in a very sympathetic style. As a result

Threre are some terrific songs on the album standouts for me are the title track, Can't beat the Kid (covered by John Hammond in the 70s), Three Hundred Pounds of Hongry and Sad Song  (Covered by Otis) and I Can't be Me

After the "success" of this CD three more CD's of demos were released of diminishing returns although the first one Dear Y'all - The Songwriting Sessions would be a very good addition to anyone's collection.  So I was hooked and then managed to seek out some older albums by Eddie the pick of which would be Very Extremely Dangerous.

This is really a great lost album, recorded live at the Muscle Shoals Studio it has a real energy about it. The Swampers seem energised by the fact they are playing and recording for one of their own.  In addition to We Got It there are a bunch of essential Eddie songs,some of which were co-written with Dan, including Shoot the Moon, You Got Me Singing, Yeah Man and I Got the Feeling.  As it seems to be so often the case the album sank on the back of Capricorn records struggling financially and folding around the time of its release.  I feel lucky that I have been able to replace my CD of this album with a great vinyl copy in a respectably battered sleeve.