Search - Hot Tuna :: Keep on Truckin: The Very Best of Hot Tuna

Truckin' through the Seventies

Jim Newsom | Norfolk, VA | 06/20/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Jefferson Airplane leadguitarist Kaukonen was one of the best, most distinctive of the post-Beatles guitar players. Whether finger picking acoustically or cutting through the band's increasingly dense textures with razor-toned electric licks, his singular sound defined the Airplane as surely as the loose three-part harmonies of Marty Balin, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick. His take on the traditional "Good Shepherd" on the Volunteers LP gave a clue of his arranging abilities and where his heart lay.



Kaukonen had spent his high school years in Washington, DC, where he and his best friend, Jack Casady, would haunt local blues, folk and jazz clubs. Jorma ended up in Frisco as a charter member of the Airplane and, when the band fired its original bassist, he sent for his old pal to come west.



Though the J&J twosome found immense success with this most adventurous of rock bands, they never lost their love for the rootsy music they had discovered together as teenagers. As Jefferson Airplane took off for higher heights, they began working occasionally on the side as a duo playing the acoustic blues of The Rev. Gary Davis, Jelly Roll Morton and Robert Johnson.



Their first album, recorded live at a club in Berkeley, California, came out in the spring of 1970. That first release was a stripped down affair, spotlighting Kaukonen's virtuosic acoustic finger picking and Casady's inventive contrapuntal electric bass playing. As the Airplane disbanded, Hot Tuna became more than an extracurricular hobby, expanding into a full-bore rock band with a following of its own.



The newly compiled Keep on Truckin' covers the history of Hot Tuna's various incarnations in the `70s. From ample samplings of the band's original acoustic orientation through its evolution to blistering blues rock, this collection resurrects one of the great offshoots of the classic rock era, a band that may never have been able to escape the shadow of its principals' past, but one unquestionably deserving a re-evaluation. --Jim Newsom



Originally published in Port Folio Weekly, 6/13/06

Copyright 2006 Port Folio Weekly. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

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On that corner when that light turn green, I saw the strange

Mike | San Jose, CA | 05/10/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A single-disc Hot Tuna compilation is a tough proposition. England's Edsel Records tried it in 1994 with "Trimmed and Burning," a 16-track cross-section of every H.T. album except the first. "Trimmed" and the newer "Truckin'" both contain "Killing Time In The Crystal City," one of Jorma's finest acoustic blues compositions...quite possibly THE finest...of his entire career. It was inexplicably trimmed from the CD release of Hot Tuna's final "first-phase" album, the live "Double Dose," so that the album would fit on a single disc. You have to shake your head in wonder at how a decision like that could have been reached. "Crystal City" is also absent from the two-disc "Best of Hot Tuna" CD. The reality is that if you slammed the three compilations I've mentioned together and added a few bonus tracks, you'd have one mighty box set. That didn't happen, so let's return our focus to "Keep On Truckin'." You get two tracks each from "Hot Tuna," "First Pull Up," "America's Choice" and "Double Dose," three from "Burgers," and one each from the remaining three original albums. Offering Yellow Fever's "Sunrise Dance With The Devil" instead of "Bar Room Crystal Ball" (which appears on "Trimmed" and the double "Best Of") is questionable. "Crystal Ball" marked the apex of "Electric Hot Tuna"...it was loud, yet elegant and melodic with trademark Jorma lyrics about friends who want to help him but "they ain't got time to see which way I've fallen." "Hesitation Blues" and "Death Don't Have No Mercy," from the first album, are as essential as essential gets. I see "Keep On Truckin'" as a way to whet the appetite of novice Hot Tuna fans and a means of filling in the blanks (with "Crystal City") for the true believers."