God bless Hughie Thomasson’s guitar solo on the Outlaws’ “Hurry Sundown”

By Steve Newton

I really, really enjoy guitar solos sometimes.

When a geetar player hits just the right notes with just the right feel, it’s almost like a religious experience for me.

That’s why I’ve asked God to bless exquisite guitar solos by Scott Gorham on Thin Lizzy’s “Romeo and the Lonely Girl”, Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser on Blue Öyster Cult’s “Burnin’ For You”, Snowy White on Peter Green’s “Slabo Day”, and Steve Cropper on Rod Stewart’s “Stone Cold Sober”.

And now it’s time to request that the lord sanctify Hughie Thomasson’s guitar solo on the Outlaws’ “Hurry Sundown”.

The Outlaws, aka the Florida Guitar Army, were an amazing southern-rock band back in the ’70s. They’re best known for “Green Grass and High Tides”, their guitar-drenched 1975 response to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” opus from two years before.

But my favourite Outlaws tune–as I recently announced in a controversial 20 Best Of list–is the title track of their 1977 Hurry Sundown LP.

It actually features several guitar solos by both Thomasson and fellow lead player Billy Jones, but it’s the one by Thomasson that takes place at the 1:36 mark that really sends a shiver up my spine.

I mean, the tasty Les Paul solo that Jones soars into at the 1:20 mark is special in and of itself, but when Thomasson takes it over on his Strat 16 seconds later, that frenzied barrage of notes that he kicks things off with, coupled with those killers bends and supercool slides down the neck–it all adds up to the ultimate 17-second solo for me.

To the consternation of many, I’ve previously declared that Mick Ronson‘s lead break on Ian Hunter’s “Once Bitten Twice Shy” was the greatest guitar solo of all time. I also posited that Jim McCarty‘s 35-second wipeout on Bob Seger’s “Get Out of Denver” was a close second.

I’m not sure if Thomasson’s inspired six-string blast on “Hurry Sundown” is the third-greatest guitar solo of all time, but I’m not sure that it isn’t, either.

What do you think?

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