by Nick DeRiso
Several of Muddy Waters‘ great sidemen — Junior Wells, Buddy Guy and Otis Spann — appear on the loose and funky “Southside Blues Jam,” originally issued by Chicago’s Delmark Records.
Funny, for all their marquee value, Wells and Guy — Buddy was born in Lettsworth, Louisiana — are very nearly overshadowed by the intricate, intelligent playing of the shoulda-been legendary Spann.
In this, his last studio appearance, Spann’s fecund blues genius is writ large. Even as Junior Wells (ever the showman) chicken-legs through each song — “I know her daddy got to be a millionaire,” he sings, “I can tell by the way she walks” — Spann never stumbles.
But Spann is only part of what makes this record important.
Recorded in December 1969 and January 1970, “Southside Blues Jam” lives up to its name — portraying a refreshing disregard for later-period blues recordings’ penchant for production. It’s roll the tapes, and let’s play.
The album recalls the old Blue Monday, where Guy was a regular, at Theresa’s Blues Bar on Chicago’s Southside. The feel of those sweaty workouts serves a blueprint for the playing and an inspiration for the album’s name.
One drawback (at least for me): No liner notes. The closest you get to that is a photograph of the boys on the back. A treat, sure, but not something that lends any perspective.
Even so, they seem june-bug happy with the proceedings in that photo — exhuberant with the memory of instruments only just now cooling off back in the studio.
In my mind, they’ve just finished “Trouble Don’t Last Always,” the almost eight-minute long closer. That song is everything “Southside Blues Jam” aspires to be as an album: Blues without the lathered-up producers and thunk-out structure.
On it, Buddy Guy is pushing, Junior Wells is pulling — and check Otis Spann: Cucumber-cool, jacket-pulled-off slick.
The gospel never sounded so blue, so jazz, so locomotive.
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You're absolutely right about Otis. By chance my wife (who's funkier than me) just got "Hoodoo Man Blues"
from about 4 years earlier. What both these things remind me of is that the blues according to guys like Junior Walker and Buddy Guy had great humor, and sometimes outright wackiness, which got erased by the white guys who covered it. (Though I don't know what other choice they had.)
I saw Buddy Guy a couple of years ago and he's still eccentric, and still a great performer. Looks young, too.
You'll want to pick up "Play the Blues" (1972, also with Buddy Guy) and "Pleading the Blues" (1979), as well. We talk about them here:
http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Junior%20Wells