Shuggie Otis shines in rare showing at Ardmore Music Hall

Shuggie Otis, 61, is still a mystery. The incendiary guitar-playing son of R&B legend Johnnie Otis was nearly the next Hendrix - only funkier and cuter - until he took a spacey, more soulful route. For the most part, Shuggie Otis - like his dad - was more interested in the eccentric corners and odd edges of the blues and large-band R&B.

Otis, best known for writing "Strawberry Letter 23," a song that topped the charts in 1977 in a Brothers Johnson cover, has remained an enigma whose work is best known as samples for Beyonce and hip-hop producer J Dilla.

Legacy and Luaka Bop have rereleased his 1970s albums with additional rarities, and Otis himself claims new material is right around the corner, but for now, he must satisfy his cultists with rare gigs such as Thursday night's stormy-weather show at the Ardmore Music Hall.

A lean, tall man with a pencil-thin William Powell mustache and bright smile, Otis is a handsome sight, the very embodiment of his father's hit "Willie and the Hand Jive." Together with his taut drumming brother Nick, inventive boogie-centric keyboardist Ed Roth, grooving bassist Paul Lamb, and saxophonist/flutist Albert Wing, Otis set fire to a brisk set of (mostly) blues-tinged music with sad, mad, tortile solos rich with deep, lived-in emotion.

"Trying to Get Close to You" and "Miss Pretty" started the proceedings handsomely with choppy blues riffs, zig-zagging funk, and Otis' voice high, mellow, and frank in its discourse of amorous love and missed connections. Before he closed "Pretty," Otis delivered a tight curlicue of fuzz-toned frenzy while Roth went for a percolating Synclavier solo.

"Island Letter" and "Sweetest Thang" offered the mellow-voiced Otis a shot at hard roadhouse blues and a chance to share his thoughts on the ladies in his life, but "Me and My Woman" took the low, slow road into paisley, spaced-out, flanged soul that left the singer alone and lonely.

His blues were noble, but his eerie, future soul material - free-jazzy in parts - was trippy and subtly out of hand with an abandon rarely heard. This included a Rundgrenesque "Wings of Love" and a galloping take on "Strawberry Letter 23" complete with its original bridge of clustering guitar squeaks.