Cuzz at the Little Feat show, Macon, GA, 9-30-2001
Cuzz Hutchison has died. He passed Wednesday, September 21, 2011.
I wasn’t close with Cuzz – at least, not nearly as much as many other people – and in fact had not spoken with or seen him in many years. This is due in large part to my “retirement” from playing gigs. When I stopped playing, I gradually lost touch with many of the guys I played with… it happens, I guess.
But when I did play, I crossed paths with Cuzz and the Booty Papas fairly often. I even played with one of the incarnations of the group a few times. When I had a night off, sometimes I would go to see the band play in Macon. Once, when The Alien Sharecroppers played a gig in Panama City, after we were done for the night we got a taxi and went across town to see the Booty Papas. We were staying at the same motel. Of Big Mike’s band, in all its various formations, it can be said: They were always good, at the least. Often they were great. They were never bad. And Cuzz was always there.
I can say that I always looked forward to seeing Cuzz, and this is not some bullshit memorial where the deceased is made into a saint out of some sense of propriety – I mean what I say. I looked forward to talking with him. The guy had a good heart. He was funny as HELL. God, he cracked me up with his stories.
But surely everyone who knew him could see that he was a good guy. What was seldom mentioned – far too damned seldom, in my opinion – was the guy’s musicianship. Cuzz was a fucking monster musician. Whenever a discussion started about the great players around town, it used to gripe me that Cuzz’s name wasn’t mentioned with other bass players. I would throw his name in, and sometimes I would get a puzzled look. Many people, even other bass players, just couldn’t hear it in his playing. I heard it. The man’s sense of timing was perfect. His technique was flawless. He understood dynamics. And he played with style, man. I used to sit and laugh my ass off – while he laughed at me laughing – as Cuzz played the coolest riffs and lines in an otherwise standard blues arrangement. We would have that connection: The master on stage, showing off for another musician who hears it and gets what’s he’s doing. Bass players everywhere could have learned a lot from watching that band play without a drummer.
He’ll be missed dearly. I deeply regret that I stayed away from gigs so long that I didn’t even know he was ill. Cuzz, you were a master of your instrument. And you were one hell of a good guy. Rest in peace, brother.
Paul
