COMING TO TOWN

'Coming to Town' by John Lee Hooker, Earl Palmer, Tim Drummond, Miles Davis & Roy Rogers

# The Hot Spot: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
# Genre: Blues/Jazz
# Label: Antilles, 1990

To provide the music for The Hot Spot, the noirish tale of a loner (Don Johnson!) in a small town, director Dennis Hopper hired two vibe-masters from different musical worlds: bluesman John Lee Hooker and jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. He put them together with a band anchored by the most dynamic drummer in New Orleans, Earl Palmer. The filmmaker apparently gave few specific instructions. The concept, if it can be called that, was to use two musicians with deeply iconic sounds — one grumble and you know it's Hooker; ditto for Davis' crackly muted trumpet cry — to pull the blues a step or two away from its predictable patterns and make it signify in different ways.
The credits say "Original music composed by Jack Nitzsche," but in most cases the music doesn't seem predetermined or in any way written out. In fact, it feels like a late-night jam session; the unhurried vamps drift along, luring the musicians into wonderfully open, exploratory tangents that sometimes go nowhere and sometimes wind up in unexpectedly poignant places, as on "Coming To Town" (audio). Davis is in particularly sharp form. At the time, he was playing the glossy and often overblown instrumental funk that defined his last recordings, but the earthy textures of this project inspire more urgent and heartfelt improvisation from him.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• John Lee Hooker
• Earl Palmer
• Tim Drummond
• Miles Davis & Roy Rogers
• Blues/Jazz

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