Get In The Groove
Cover of Hungry Chuck

HUNGRY CHUCK

The history of issues:

Bearsville LP 2071     1972 U.S. issue

Warner-Pioneer P-7606W     1977 Japanese reissue
CBS/SONY 20AP-1988     1983 Japanese reissue
Pony Canyon PCCY-00727     1995 Japanese reissue
Retitled as SOUTH IN NEW ORLEANS:
See For Miles See 220     1988 U.K reissue
C-Five Records C5CD 590     1992 U.K. reissue
See For Miles 501     1995 U.K reissue
C-Five Records C5CD ???     1999 U.K reissue
JVC Japan 63727     2007 Japanese reissue (with three addtional tracks)
Victor 64224     2008 Japanese reissue
Rhino Records Digital     2015 US reissue

Side A

Hat's Off America!
Jeff Gutcheon

Cruising
Jeff Gutcheon

Old Thomas Jefferson
Jeff Gutcheon

Indigroduction to
Jeff Gutcheon
Play That Country Music
Jeff Gutcheon

Find The Enemy
N.D. Smart

People Do
Jeff Gutcheon

Side B

Watch The Trucks Go By
Words and Music by Joe Hutchinson and P.A. Echler

Dixie Highway
Jeff Gutcheon

You Better Watch It Ben, Someday You're Gonna Run Outta Gas (I'm Giving You A Warning)
N.D. Smart

Hoona Spoona
Joe Hutchinson

All Bowed Down
Jeff Gutcheon

* South In New Orleans/Doin' The Funky Lunchbox
Johnny Wright & Jack Anglin/Amos Garrett
(* also included on the Bearsville Box Set)

SOUTH IN NEW ORLEANS   See For Miles See 220   C-Five Records C5CD 590

UK Reissue

Bearsville Box Set

Bearsville Box Set (Japan)
contains previously unissued material

Review from The Rising Storm Blog:

I discovered Hungry Chuck serendipitously via Bobby Charles’s eponymous 1972 album. Beyond Charles’s inspirational songs I was fired by his core backing outfit’s astonishingly sympathetic funky swamp-rock playing. I knew Amos Garrett already from his liquid-fingered guitar solo on Maria Muldaur’s sublime worldwide hit “Midnight At The Oasis”, but the other guys were strangers to me. On researching Garrett further with a view to identifying yet more stuff on which he’d played, I came across Hungry Chuck.

Former Eric Andersen sideman Garrett, original Remains drummer ND Smart II, ex-Bo Grumpus bassist Jim Colegrove and peripatetic New York pianist Jeffrey Gutcheon had backed Ian and Sylvia Tyson on their fine country-rock album Great Speckled Bird, recorded in Nashville in 1970. From there the four journeymen musicians moved to Woodstock, NY, and became effectively the house band for Albert Grossman’s Bearsville Records, whence their contribution to the Bobby Charles opus, inter alia. With moonlighting pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith from Neil Young’s alternative backing combo Stray Gators and, curiously, session trumpeter Peter Ecklund, they became Hungry Chuck, presumably jokily named for underground cartoonist Dan Clyne’s repulsive character Hungry Chuck Biscuits (unconfirmed – feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). In between backing Grossman’s extensive register of talent the guys found time to assemble their own album, which appeared eponymously as Hungry Chuck in the US in 1972 but did not find a release in the UK until retrospectively put out by See For Miles in 1988 as South In New Orleans.

Typical of most albums recorded by aggregations of talented sidemen, Hungry Chuck is a slow burner which rewards repeated listening: such outfits by definition don’t usually include chartbusting songwriters or throat-grabbing lead vocalists, but the quality of such works invariably shines through with a little aural rubbing. (To see what I mean, listen to anything by Area Code 615 or Barefoot Jerry, or any of David Lindley’s solo and El Rayo-X waxings.) Most of the songs are penned by Gutcheon; musically they’re an eclectic stew of country rock, Memphis soul and New Orleans jazzy swing, and lyrically they’re joyous deprecatory pokes at 1970s American post-hippie culture and obvious parodies of The Band, Zappa and even James Brown, all recorded with a high sense of humour and absolutely no commercial ambition. Garrett’s playing is comparatively restrained compared to his Speckled Bird output, though gloriously tasteful throughout; Colegrove’s bass is less quirky, more solid than on the Charles outing; and it’s Gutcheon’s virtuoso piano and Ecklund’s multitracked trumpet, cornet and fluegel that largely shape the arrangements. As well as the ten “proper” songs there are three episodes of playful studio nonsense credited to Smart and Garrett, presumably to give them a writer credit. Again typically for albums by such aggregations there are no real standout tracks, but the highlights include the swinging opener “Hats Off, America!” (which includes the splendidly prescient line “Tell your kids, don’t worry ‘cos the banks will never fail!”), the obvious Eagles skit “Watch The Trucks Go By” with great guest harmonica from Paul Butterfield, and the splendidly po-faced “All Bowed Down” which caricatures The Band at their most morose.

After this freshman album Hungry Chuck recorded a second, which to date remains unreleased – why? – and soon afterwards went their own ways, all being highly valued as sessioneers. Most notably, Garrett worked extensively with Maria Muldaur; Smart thumped the tubs for Gram Parsons’s Fallen Angels; Gutcheon was musical arranger for the disparate likes of Gladys Knight and Ringo Starr; and Keith stroked the strings for seven years with Uncle Neil. Proving that the split was not rancorous, the Chuck members also intermittently toured and recorded in various combinations almost until the turn of the century, and most still remain active in the business.

Internet sources for Hungry Chuck records:

Get the entire Hungry Chuck Bearsville LP at Amazon!
Previously Unavailable tracks now at Band Camp
Amazon.com

Hungry Chuck Members
Hungry Chuck History
Lost Country
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