Moloch (9)

Moloch emerged from the fertile music scene in Memphis, Tennessee in 1969. Led by guitarist Lee Baker (who had played with the Memphis Blazers throughout the decade, toured with the Mar-Keys and is often called ‘the greatest guitarist you’ve never heard of’), they gigged alongside the MC5 and the Stooges and were offered the opportunity to make an album for local Stax subsidiary Enterprise in 1970. Recorded at the legendary Ardent studios with local producer Don Nix (a collaborator with Lonnie Mack, Furry Lewis, Freddy King, Albert King, Delaney & Bonnie, Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers and others, and often credited as a key architect of the ‘Memphis Sound’), they laid down a rich stew of 12-bar blues peppered with fiery guitar, fat organ and taut drumming. Though the bulk of the songs were penned by Nix (including the original version of Goin' Down, later to become a blues standard covered by Eric Clapton, Freddie King, Deep Purple, Pearl Jam and others), the sound is unmistakably theirs, and betrays the influence of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Blue Cheer as well as blues musicians like Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sleepy John Estes and Bukka White (all of whom Baker had played with at the legendary Memphis Country Blues Festivals of the late 60s). The album was a triumph, but failed to sell, prompting the band to split in 1971. The following year, Baker assembled another version of Moloch (featuring bassist Michael Jones, later to play with Talking Heads) and released a one-off 45 on a tiny local label called Booger. This featured even more vicious guitar than the LP, but was doomed to obscurity from the start. Baker went on to play with fellow local hero Alex Chilton (whose Big Star were to suffer a similar fate to Moloch on another Stax subsidiary, Ardent), contributing guitar to his legendary Third / Sister Lovers LP and the Like Flies On Sherbet album later in the decade. Baker also formed Mudboy & the Neutrons with friends Jim Dickinson, Sid Selvidge and Jimmy Crosthwait (dubbed ‘the great band that nobody can find’ by Bob Dylan), and collaborated extensively with pioneering blues guitarist Furry Lewis. He was still prominent on the Memphis music scene when he was senselessly murdered in September 1996, and it is to be hoped that this reissue will bring his astonishing guitar player to a wider audience.