line up 1 (1969)

- Ronnie Barclay -- lead guitar  

- Chuck Bennett (aka Charles Wayne Avery) (RIP 2009) --

  vocals, bass, keyboards  (1969)

- G.C. Coleman (aka Gregory Sylvester Coleman)  (RIP 2006) --

  drums, percussion  (1969)

- Mike Previty -- percussion  (1969)

- Jack Register -- bass  (1969)

- Steve Spencer -- keyboards  (1969)

- Pete 'Peaches' Williams -- guitar (1969)

- GC Coleman and the Soul Twisters

- The Georgia Power Band (G.C. Coleman)

- Link Wray and the Raymen (Charles Wayne Avery) 

- The Winstons (G.C. Coleman)

Genre: rock

Rating: 4 stars ****

Title:  Hammer

Company: House of the Fox

Catalog: HOF-LP-2
Year: 1969

Country/State: Oxon Hill, Maryland

Grade (cover/record): VG+/VG+

Comments: promo copy

Available: 1

Catalog ID: 5679

Price: $200.00

Having seen this one occasionally pop up on high priced dealer lists with the usual hyperbole descriptions ('mind altering psych' ... 'buckets of fuzz') I'd always been curious to hear it.  The fact they were from the Washington, D.C. area was also of interest to me.

Led by singer/bass player Chuck Bennett who under his given name Charles Wayne Avery had previously been a member of Link Wray's Raymen, these guys were apparently based in Oxon Hill, Maryland, but recorded their 1969 debut in Memphis at the Sounds of Memphis Studio.   Signed by LeLan Rogers' House of the Fox label, 1969's "Hammer" found the band teamed with producer Guy Cameron.  Rogers was also credited as the supervisory producer.  Powered by the combination of Ronnie Barclay's stinging lead guitar, Bennett's molten rock voice (which frequently put the likes of Paul Rodgers and Robert Plant to shame), and Jack Register's pounding bass, these guys literally had all the finesse of a flying mallet.  Forget those write ups going on about this one's psych-influences.  There weren't any.  Exemplified by tracks like 'Slip Away', the slinky 'Trouble', 'Home', and 'Brown-Eyed Woman' this was hardcore, blues-oriented bar rock - classic American hard rock easily as good as anything in the Bad Company, Faces, Free, Zeppelin catalog,  Great melodies, killer guitar, a dynamite rhythm section in the form of drummer G.C. Coleman and bassist Register, and above all Bennett's fantastic voice.   The only real disappointment was the band's cover of Edwin Hawkins' 'Oh Happy Day'.  Mind you there wasn't anything wrong with their version; it served to showcased Bennett's amazing soul licks, but by the same token their version (complete with gospel chorus) did nothing to improve on the original.  To my ears some thirty years after its release this one's still heads above virtually every hard rock album that's come along since.  Washington, D.C. dj Charlie Brown's liner notes were humorous - he suggested the band be named 'D.C. Sanitation Department'.

Hammer" track listing:
(side 1)

1.) Slip Away - 5:34

2.) Trouble - 5:45

3.) Fever - 3:45

4.) Home - 4:11

5.) Brown-Eyed Woman - 4:32

(side 2)
1.) Nobody but You - 2:39

2.) Come with Me - 3:36

3.) We Want to Be Free - 5:24

4.) Oh, Happy Day - 7:06

There have been a couple of reissues.  Released in 1978, by the tax Scam Album World label (under the L&BJ imprint), "Hillow Hammit" (note the slight variation in spelling) reissued the original album with new cover art (that was actually quite cool) and a slightly different track listing - one song was dropped from the original release.  

In 2002 the Italian Comet/Dodo Records reissued the collection in CD format (Dodo catalog number DDR 510). 

After the band called it quits Bennett played in a number of local bands and then found work as a touring musician.  By the 1980s he'd dropped out of music and spent the rest of his years working as a Washington, D.C. cabbie. He died of emphysema and cancer in January 2008. 

Talk about a strange connection - drummer Coleman recorded with The Winston and was responsible for the famous drum pattern on the track 'Amen Brother', The Georgia Power Band and other outfits.  He died in September 2006.

I may be the only person to own both versions of this album simultaneously, so I will attempt to set the record straight. This is actually a reissue of the original album, which is titled "Hammer", recorded circa 1969, and possibly not released until '71. The band's name was incorrectly spelled Hillow Hammet on that version. It is corrected on this version, which was issued on what may have been a tax scam label known as L & BJ Records, in 1978. This version features an alternate cover, and radically inferior sound quality and remixes compared to the original. It also features a different track list, which I will attempt to sort out: Side 1 lists 6 tracks on both the cover and disc label. However, only 5 appear on the vinyl. The listed track A6, "Slip Away", actually does appear, retitled, as track B5. Track B3 is also a retitled version of "Nobody But You" from the original. There is also 1 extra track here, in A3. Other than that, there is just a reshuffling of the original order. The sound on this version is pretty awful compared to the first version. On some tracks, the base is elevated so much as to the point of severe distortion, making it sound like a bass guitar sludge-fest. Of course this can be improved by lowering the bass tone control on your stereo, but it still is not anywhere near as good as on "Hammer". The volume on some tracks is also considerably lower than the rest of the album. One might hazard a guess that the bootlegger/tax scammer that issued this may have gotten a raw, early, unmixed version of the tapes. But somehow, after all of these detractions, the album still contains some appeal over the original, in that it sounds "garag-ier" in such a raw state, whereas the original comes off comparatively polished. Incidentally, the album's longest track, A5, is completely out of place, and simply awful.