Los Racketeeros

Los Racketeeros was the blues-and-bluegrass project Charlie Whitney formed in August 1979 — a small, ego-free band that worked the London pub-and-club circuit for the better part of two decades and released exactly one album in 1995. It is the most relaxed thing in the Whitney catalogue, and one of the few records the Family guitarist made entirely on his own terms.

The band ran in parallel to Axis Point — Whitney's two-album RCA project with Eddie Hardin and Rob Townsend, also active 1978–1980 — but where Axis Point was a serious commercial bid (two studio LPs, a touring band, a major-label deal), Los Racketeeros was the opposite: an acoustic four-piece working a deliberately small circuit for the love of it. After Axis Point dissolved in 1980 the Racketeeros became Whitney's primary live vehicle. The lineup that recorded the album was Whitney alongside Tony Taylor, Alan "Skunk" Rogers and Pete Tomlyn. Whitney played almost exclusively acoustic slide on the sessions — a sound that had been a quiet undercurrent in his Family work and only occasionally heard through later groups. Here it became the foreground.

The album's origin is sketched in its own sleeve notes. The narrative is dated August 1979 and set in Andalucia, in "a crowded bar down a hot dusty street… a crescent moon hanging low over the rim of the night, alive with cicadas and music." Whitney and Taylor are mainlining the local nightlife when, per the sleeve, "the birth of Los Racketeeros" happens. The track sequence is then attributed to a fictional touring itinerary — "from the South Pacific to Bodmin, from Lugdarup to Jackson, Tennessee" — before the record is cut at the imagined Camallia Del Rey studio on Calle San Miguel, Granada. The Spanish setting is partly tongue-in-cheek; the sleeve is written in a deadpan tall-tale voice, signed off "Hasta La Salar."

The personnel block names the four-piece — Whitney on banjo, acoustic mandolin, doubleneck guitar, lap slide and vocals; Taylor on rhythm guitar, electric "dwerring" banjo, acoustic and vocals; Rogers on drums, percussion and vocals; Tomlyn on double bass and vocals — plus guest contributions from Bryan Taylor (banjo, bouzouki, percussion), The Screecheros (backing vocals) and Marcus Wherry (trombone). Production is credited to "Hoot & Curly" — almost certainly Whitney and Taylor under tongue-in-cheek stage names, the same voice that runs through the sleeve text.

The album's publishing is split between Almajopeg Music — the band's own publishing imprint, which carries every Whitney/Taylor and Whitney/Taylor/Rogers original on the record — and EMI Music, which carries only Burlesque (the Family song from Bandstand, which sits at track 5 as the album's one cover and its one Whitney/Chapman co-write). The 1995 CD is effectively self-released; there is no major-label pressing partner credited on the disc. The cover, the sleeve narrative and the recording credits all point to a release Whitney shepherded out himself, sixteen years after the original masters were cut.

What surfaces on disc is an acoustic-led country-rock set that compares directly to Grateful Dead's Workingman's Dead — a record that rewards repeat listening more than first hearing, with Whitney's slide threading through every track and a rough rhythm-section warmth that doesn't try for studio polish. The tracklist is ten Whitney originals (six co-written with Taylor, three with Taylor and Rogers) plus the Burlesque cover.

1. Gypsy Girl (3:15)
2. What Will Be (3:50)
3. What's Really Yours (3:00)
4. Tennessee Rain (3:40)
5. Burlesque (3:55) — the Bandstand track, recast as acoustic country
6. C'Mon Baby (5:10)
7. What's That Sound (3:10)
8. Home of the Blues (3:15)
9. Rhythm in the Sky (3:55)
10. Saturday Night (2:40)
11. The Rackethead Song (3:18)

Whitney himself, asked years later which Los Racketeeros songs were his strongest, picked What Will Be, What's Really Yours, and the Burlesque re-imagining — the last one being the only Family song he had revisited in the project, recast as a porch-front acoustic shuffle a long way from the Moog-through-guitar riff that defined the 1972 single. Sleeve credits also flag a double-neck acoustic guitar in his rig on the sessions — an unusual instrument that drew enough attention to make it into the album's printed credits.

Whitney followed Los Racketeeros with his only solo album, John Whitney AKA Charlie Whitney (1999) — twelve mostly self-played tracks leaning electric (where Los Racketeeros had been resolutely acoustic), with a slide-driven re-reading of My Friend the Sun as the closing Family-catalogue tip of the hat. Through the 2000s he continued working in the same understated vein, including the Whitney-Roberts Combo with Robert A. Roberts, an experimental folk duo. Los Racketeeros itself stayed loosely active — laid-back enough, in MOJO's phrase, to span sixteen years between formation and first record, and in no obvious hurry to add a second.

Sister projects in the Family ecosystem:

• Charlie Whitney — the bandleader's full bio
• Axis Point (1978–1980) — Whitney + Hardin + Townsend + Tench + McCracken; two RCA LPs
• Streetwalkers (1974–1977) — the immediate post-Family Chapman/Whitney band; five albums
• Family Tree — full hub of Family-related projects

Album. Los Racketeeros — self-released (Almajopeg Music imprint), 1995 CD, 11 tracks. The sleeve narrative dates the band's origin to August 1979 in Andalucia, but the recording itself is more plausibly from the 1990s.

Personnel on the recorded album: Charlie Whitney (banjo, acoustic mandolin, doubleneck guitar, lap slide, vocals); Tony Taylor (rhythm guitar, electric "dwerring" banjo, acoustic, vocals); Alan "Skunk" Rogers (drums, percussion, vocals); Pete Tomlyn (double bass, vocals). Guests: Bryan Taylor (banjo, bouzouki, percussion); The Screecheros (backing vocals); Marcus Wherry (trombone). Produced by "Hoot & Curly."

Publishing: Almajopeg Music (all originals) · EMI Music (Burlesque, by arrangement, as the Family/Whitney–Chapman track).

Sources: Discogs release/30497161; the album's own sleeve notes; Charlie Whitney Wikipedia entry; "Faulty Towers" — John Bungey, MOJO (August 1996), in the Press Archive; Charlie Whitney interview with Family Bandstand.