Hot Tuna
Final Vinyl

Listening notes

Hot Tuna's Final Vinyl, released in 1979 on Grunt Records (catalog number BXL1-3357), arrives with a title that announces itself plainly. Whatever the intention behind that name, it stands as a document of a band working within the blues, blues rock, and rock genres that had defined their output.

The record spreads ten tracks across two sides, running a substantial total when the individual durations are added together. Side A opens with "Hesitation Blues" at five minutes and five seconds, followed by "Candy Man," "Keep On Truckin'," "Water Song," and "Day To Day Out The Window Blues." The sequencing moves between shorter and longer pieces, with "Water Song" at five minutes and fifteen seconds representing the side's lengthiest entry. Side B mirrors that structural variety, opening with "Easy Now" at five minutes and ten seconds before arriving at "Funky #7," the record's longest track at five minutes and forty-seven seconds. The side closes through "Hot Jelly Roll Blues," "Song From The Stainless Cymbal," and "I Wish You Would."

Several of the titles pull from familiar blues tradition. "Hesitation Blues," "Candy Man," and "Keep On Truckin'" are titles with deep roots in American vernacular music, and their presence here places the album in conversation with that lineage, though the specifics of how these versions relate to prior recordings are not addressed here.

Grunt Records, the label founded in connection with Jefferson Airplane's orbit, had been Hot Tuna's home across multiple releases, and this 1979 entry continued that association. The catalog number BXL1-3357 places it within Grunt's documented output for that period.

Collectors and researchers encountering this record should verify personnel, pressing variants, and any additional release details through primary documentation before drawing further conclusions.