Snatch and The Poontangs

Snatch and The Poontangs is an album of adult-oriented R&B from Johnny and Shuggie Otis, along with Delmar Evans.

FOR ADULTS ONLY!! This album contains explicit language.

The music is excellent and shows that there is a lighter and humorous side to the blues and last but not least, it features some funky rhythms and wicked lead licks by Johnny’s then 13-year-old son Johnny Shuggie Otis Jr.

He got a lot of press for being precocious on this album; he played all the guitars and bass tracks, plus harmonica (Johnny played drums, piano and vibes; this was a two-man band, courtesy of overdubs, plus Delmar Evans on vocals). And he does do an amazing job for a kid; but you can’t listen to him as a kid. What he does is a very good job for ANYONE, regardless of age. What you don’t tend to hear about is the singer. Nicknamed “Mighty Mouth”, Delmar Evans gives us real gifts throughout this disc. He has a strong, reedy falsetto and a low growl, and he bounces from one to the other, and in between, with great facility. Listen to the clip of “Sittin Here All Alone”. It’s a voice that truly deserves to be better known than it is, and this disc is a great way to get familiar with it. Listen to him cracking himself up in “That’s Life”, unable to continue on about the guy from Podunk who woke up in a bunk full of funk, he laughs, “Aw, f*** it, y’all play me sump’m, sh**!!” I still can’t hear that without smiling wide. Cold Shot was a legitimate release by the Johnny Otis Show, comprised of the musicians mentioned. It opened with “Signifying Monkey”, a musical treatment of a traditional ‘toast’ (an african-american oral tradition, see Roger Abrahams). From there it continues with straight up high-quality 1969 L.A. Blues. This album could be found in record stores. “For Adults Only”, on the other hand, was an entirely anonymous production. My guess is, that’s because the cover art alone, let alone the songs, could have landed anyone involved with the project in jail on obscenity charges. Though the band is clearly the same, and F.A.O. even opened with the same track as Cold Shot, no real person’s real name appeared anywhere on the original album.

Professional ratings: Allmusic 3 of 5 stars

Review by Richie Unterberger of allmusic:

Snatch and the Poontangs’ sole, self-titled album was actually done by the band of famed R&B bandleader Johnny Otis. You didn’t think that a band with a name like Snatch and the Poontangs was likely to do much touring and get much airplay, did you? The record couldn’t have gotten much airplay either, filled to the gills as it was with profane and sexually explicit language. In that sense, it was something of a groundbreaker, with extemporizing as blunt and filthy as almost any to be heard on rap records several decades later. The language was barrier-busting (or should we say ball-busting), much more so than the somewhat faceless blues-soul backup music. Otis did have the wit to rework his “Willie and the Hand Jive” hit as “Hey Shine” (with suitably no-holds-barred lyrics), and the spoken narrative “Two Time Slim,” set against lonesome blues guitar, is a little more inventive in its delivery and musical track than much of its surroundings. The wordless “Two Girls in Love (With Each Other),” with its orgiastic female moans and improvised jazz-blues licks faintly in the background, also sticks out for the relative difference in its construction. Snatch and the Poontangs and the Johnny Otis Show’s Cold Shot, also from 1969, were combined onto one CD on an Ace reissue in 2002, with the addition of two previously unreleased Snatch and the Poontangs tracks.

LP track listing
All songs composed by Johnny Otis

Side One

1. “The Signifyin’ Monkey (Part 1)” – 3:07
2. “The Signifyin’ Monkey (Part 2)” – 4:02
3. “That’s Life” – 2:29
4. “The Great Stack-A-Lee” – 6:18
5. “The Pissed-Off Cowboy” – 2:29

Side Two

6. “Hey Shine” – 3:31
7. “Two-Time Slim” – 5:05
8. “Big John Jeeter” – 5:25
9. “Two Girls In Love (With Each Other)” – 4:34

Released: 1969
Recorded: 1969
Genre: R&B
Length: 37:00
Label: Kent
Producer: The Hawk (Johnny Otis)

Personnel

* The Mouth (Delmar “Mighty Mouth” Evans) – vocals
* Prince Wunnerful (Shuggie Otis) – guitar, bass, organ
* The Hawk (Johnny Otis) – drums, piano, vibes