Big Ron Hunter - Ron Hunter’s The Great Unknown featured in Living Blues

Reviewed by David Whiteis

Big Ron Hunter, a native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, learned guitar from his father when he was a young boy; he also received tutelage from the late Guitar Gabriel.  Virtually unknown outside his circle of family, friends and acquaintances, Hunter would seem to be representative of the prototypical blues (or folk) “discovery”- a workingman who has spent most of his life playing and singing primarily for his own satisfaction.

Hunter strums with a somewhat heavy-handed but dexterous propulsiveness.  Although he proclaims himself a bluesman on several of these selections (and despite the liner notes’ reference to B.B. King), his rhythmic, chordal, and melodic ideas, as well as his lyrics, sound influenced mostly by recent and contemporary pop and folk-rock.

Stylistic quibbles aside, Hunter has a good deal to offer.  His light-toned mewl seems to straddle the line between his natural upper range and an effortless falsetto (think of a pop-style Skip James minus the existential terror), and his lyrics manage to be both deeply personal and universally themed.  On the McCartney-esque Play Your Card Right he intersperses feel-good bromides (“spread love all in my heart/ ‘til it’s time to part”) with vivid reminiscences of a downhome childhood.  Not Gonna Stress Myself and Through My Eyes (the latter featuring pianist Dave Keys laying down patters that would sound appropriate on an early-era Billy Joel outing) find him offering unpretentious, almost ingenuous-sounding life lessons, sounding more like a youthful new-folk troubadour than a 55-plus-year-old self-styled bluesman.

Run Hunter’s music might sound more at home in a hippie coffee house than a juke; whether it will please diehard blues fans over the long haul remains to be seen.  He is, however, a talented songman who deserves the recognition (and, one hopes, the paydays) that his newfound association with the Music Maker label should garner him.

-David Whiteis, Living Blues, Issue #202, Vol.40. #4