Jack Rose - Red Horse, White Mule LP

Jack’s 2002 solo debut Red Horse, White Mule was a bit of an outlier in the underground gestalt at the time of issue, coming just before the wave of releases from the new generation of Takoma/Fahey-inspired players. Strictly a solo affair, Red Horse balances the epic side long raga of “Red Horse” against a second side of shorter pieces, including the ragged slide style of “The Colonel’s Blues.” Jack’s technique doesn’t have the refinement that it would quickly find, but the compositions and performances hit thread the needed between the new and the classic with a rough hewn charm.

“Rose's personalized and disparate criteria awaken feelings of both rapture and tragedy on the scale of that which must have been felt by the newly-wed anthropologist who drove Kiowa Indian guests out of his Oklahoma residence with Victrola discs of Amelita Galli-Curci in order to go to bed with his bride or the child who, on hearing Bugs Bunny sing Queen Liluokalani's dirge "Aloha Oe," quarantined himself in the clothes hamper until such time that the United States withdraws from Hawai'i.”

Kisan Nagai, Blues Scholar, on Red Horse, White Mule