Photo Credit: Blaine Schultz
The James Hunter Six
Pity the headliner who has to follow the James Hunter Six. Suited and booted, Hunter conducted a master class on the birth of rock and roll Saturday evening at the Miller Lite Oasis Stage.
What for others might be a retro image, Hunter wears like a second skin. The British R&B vocalist covered touchstones Gatemouth Brown, Larry Williams and The 5 Royales to state his case. He is as good a working authority on 20th century music as you will find. With the thick-as-molasses sound of a real live Hammond B3 organ and Leslie speaker backing him, Hunter’s crack band also included drums, upright bass and a pair of saxophones. Showing off his orange Gretsch Duane Eddy model guitar he said, “I’ve wanted one of these for 40 years!” before launching into Cochran’s “20 Flight Rock.”
Count Hunter among the artists whose first stop in Milwaukee was the late Northern Lights Casino—he delivered “People Gonna Talk,” from that era. He preached understanding with “Brother or Other” and he ended his set with “Believe Me Baby.”
Hunter joked he could be from the alternate universe where Ray Charles was been born deaf instead of blind—but that couldn’t have been further from the truth, gliding into Guitar Slim’s “The Things That I Used To Do,” the very tune that Charles produced in 1953.
