The Morells

The mighty Morells, from Springfield, Mo., have supplied brilliant tongue-in-cheek underground anthems for rock ’n’ roll geeks, garage-sale record collectors and barflies worldwide since 1977. How they can be Midwesternly stoic, ragingly rockin’ and unabashedly romantic about pop, hillbilly and rock is chapter one in the Hallelujah Book of Get Down. Like Abbott and Costello before them, D. Clinton Thompson and Lou Whitney lead their combo with serious knowledge of their chosen musical idiom. They’re the kind of dangerous, on record and on stage, that Jerry Lee still is—that we wish most of our music heroes still were. And D. Clinton is a flat-out American guitar treasure. He provides the stunning “buck stops here” moment with “Roy’s Blues” a five-minute instrumental written by another brilliant guitar god, the late Roy Buchanan. It’s a deep Baptist hellfire meditation, and Thompson nails it.