“During the first part of the ’70s, Black Oak Arkansas was a wildly popular touring band and Southern-rock entity with no immediate sonic contemporaries. Some fans of the genre view them as an acquired taste, and there are a couple of reasons why.
“First, the fluid grooves of the Allman Brothers or the Marshall Tucker Band are not the building blocks of the Black Oak Arkansas sound (though many of the extended three-guitar excursions on R ‘N’ R can hold their own). Rather, Black Oak Arkansas was a feral, stomping, unhinged animal in the developing world of early-’70s Southern rock, owing as much to ragged Delta blues and primal mid-’60s garage rock as they did any jam-oriented contemporaries.”
Check out the rest of Andrew Earles’ piece about the long, strange trip of BOA and Jim Dandy in this week’s Flyer.
