Eddie Hinton 45 Tribute Series Launches

Featuring Greg Dulli, Drive-By Truckers, Wussy, Heartless Bastards, Buffalo Killer, Donnie Fritts and more.

By Fred Mills

They're calling ‘em "Very Extremely Dangerous Singles," and if you are familiar with the visceral power of the late Eddie Hinton's music, you'll know right off it's an apt label.

Cincinatt's Shake It Records, a combined label and record store operation, has just launched a tribute series to the great Southern rock/soul songwriter, who was a mainstay of the Muscle Shoals scene in Alabama and played with everyone from Wilson Picket to Aretha Franklin to the Box Tops while also issuing a few now-rare solo records. He died in 1995 from a heart attack at the age of 55.

Shake It's Darren Blase decided he wanted to create limited edition 45s of artists covering Hinton, and he subsequently lined up Greg Dulli, the Drive-By Truckers, Heartless Bastards and Wussy to pitch in thus far, with plans to do 10 singles total. The Dulli and Truckers singles are just now coming out in Cincinnati and will have an official national release date of Nov. 24, but only 2000 copies of each are being pressed.

According to an interview with Blase done by BLURT contributor Steven Rosen for Cincinnati's City Beat, "After the Wussy and Bastards singles early next year, there will be 45s from Cincinnati's Buffalo Killers and Southern Soul singer/songwriter Donnie Fritts. Blase is working with other national and international acts, too."

Blase, quoted in the article, added, "My introduction to Eddie Hinton was in the backroom of Mole's Records in Clifton in about 1987 or 1988, when I found a copy of [1978 album] Very Extremely Dangerous for about 99 cents and thought that it looked cool. So I took it home and thought it was great... The reason for doing it as a series of 45s is he's a great singles songwriter and never had hits on his own. And it's my favorite format. If you can't do it in three minutes, do not do it. I like the aesthetic of it."

Read Rosen's entire story here. For details on the Hinton project and how to order the records, go to the Shake It site.