POP MUSIC REVIEW : When Jerry Reed’s Hot, He’s Hot : Guitar Man Has Some Fine Moments in an All-Too-Short Appearance at the Crazy Horse

If a cloning process is ever perfected for humans, let’s hope they try it out on Jerry Reed. That way there would be several of him, and each could go around specializing in one of his varied talents. As it is, the way he dons multiple roles as acoustic guitar finger-picker, electric flat-picker, novelty singer, humorist and all-around personality guarantees that at least a couple of those roles are going to get short shrift in his performances.

That was the case with Reed’s one-hour late show at the Crazy Horse Steak House on Monday. Although it was entertaining in its parts, it sure left one wanting more of some. As usual, it was his musicianship that got slighted to make way for his stories and humorous asides.

The show started promisingly enough: Reed announced he was bored with his usual way of doing things and sat down to finger-pick some tunes on a nylon-stringed guitar.

Reed is a remarkable finger-picker, applying a rhythmic “claw-hammer” approach to a style influenced by Chet Atkins and Merle Travis. He had all but given up performing that way in recent years, until Atkins recently urged him to take it up again.

The first of his acoustic numbers was “Mr. Lucky,” a tune he wrote for Atkins when the guitar great was recovering from cancer surgery and was worried he might die.

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“I wanted to write him a song so complicated that it would take his mind off the cancer,” Reed said to the crowd, and the instrumental could well have served that purpose, with its active bass line and shifting harmony lines. He also played Atkins’ favorite Reed rendition, “Georgia,” which featured lush jazz chording, with each note leading to the next. He then turned in some choppy chord solos on “Mule Skinner Blues.”

It’s fitting that Atkins was the one to prompt Reed to explore his musicianship again (the pair recently did a duet album and tour) in that Atkins was instrumental in the events that turned Reed away from it.

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In the late ‘60s, Reed was one of Nashville’s top studio pickers (having composed and played on Elvis Presley’s “Guitar Man” and “U.S. Male”). Atkins became Reed’s producer and helped him craft the boisterous backwoods “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” novelty persona that he’s been associated with ever since.

It’s a role that has seen Reed through several film projects (including the “Smokey and the Bandit” films), and it was still entertaining on the Crazy Horse stage, with such one-liners as: “My folks was so poor they couldn’t pay attention” and “How did they measure hail before there were golf balls?”

But had he continued playing his acoustic guitar Monday, his show could have been one of the most musically satisfying nights the Crazy Horse is likely to see this year.

Instead, he put the guitar down, only occasionally turning to his electric Telecaster later in the show.

One of those guitar-picking moments was sheer brilliance, as he and his band translated all the marching band parts of John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Strips Forever” to the fret board. While amusing, it was also an astounding, shimmering musical workout.

Reed didn’t even bother playing the signature clawing riffs on his hits “Amos Moses” and “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot,” leaving those to guitarist Bobby Lovett, who also took some breathtaking banjo solos on Earl Scruggs’ “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”

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Reed’s stories included one about his 22 months as a nonsmoker: “I’d dream about smoking. I even dreamed I tried to smoke linoleum, but I couldn’t roll it up,” he drawled.

He introduced a New Orleans R & B rhythm titled “You Lookin’ Good,” and another original, “PMS, I Guess,” which he prefaced by saying, “I made a deep study of the womankind, and wrote this song to play for men to bring your awareness glands up to speed.”

Reed is well-suited to spouting such things while ambling around the stage like a bear on moonshine. (He seemed genuinely frazzled at points Monday, perhaps due to a cold.) But one can’t help but wish there was more of his fine pickin’ along with the grinnin’.