Z.Z. Hill

Don't romanticize him. A bluesy veteran whose plentiful earlier music is for loyalists and specialists (cf. his U.K. compilation on Stateside), he turned a Bobby Bland rasp into a trademark at Malaco, which couldn't promote the original anywhere near as profitably. Maybe his secret is that he had less voice to shoot, or that deep down he was more country. Anyway, in the last three years of his life a predominantly black songwriting stable obsessed with the perils of monogamy joined forces with white producers good for soul bottom and dollops of sweetening to make him a regional star. In short, he was a hack who finally hit the jackpot, and this best-of--not the In Memoriam comp Malaco put together right after he died at forty-eight in 1984, not even his breakthrough Down Home--is his testament. It has no secrets, this record, just one great song after another: George Jackson's embittered "Cheatin in the Next Room," Jimmy Lewis's generous "Get a Little, Give a Little," Jimmy Lewis's calculating "Three Into Two Won't Go," Dave Clark's unrepentant "Friday Is My Day," and I could go on. Residual culture, my man Raymond Williams calls this sort of throwback. Hope he'd love it. (Grade: A)