Junior Wells - SouthSide Blues Jam
  • 01 Stop Breaking Down
  • 02 I Could Have Had Religion
  • 03 I Just Want To Make Love To You (Just Make Love To Me)
  • 04 Lend Me Your Love
  • 05 Long Distance Call
  • 06 Blues For Mayor Daley
  • 07 In My Younger Days
  • 08 Trouble Don't Last Always featuring Buddy Guy
  • 09 It's Too Late Brother
  • 10 Warmin' Up
  • 11 Love My Baby
  • 12 I Could Have Had Religion (alternate take)
  • 13 Rock Me
  • 14 Lexington Movies
  • 15 Got To Play The Blues
  • 01 Stop Breaking Down
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (03:33) [8.64 MB]
  • 02 I Could Have Had Religion
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (03:10) [7.73 MB]
  • 03 I Just Want To Make Love To You (Just Make Love To Me)
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (04:50) [11.55 MB]
  • 04 Lend Me Your Love
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (07:04) [16.66 MB]
  • 05 Long Distance Call
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (03:16) [7.97 MB]
  • 06 Blues For Mayor Daley
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (05:58) [14.14 MB]
  • 07 In My Younger Days
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (04:06) [9.89 MB]
  • 08 Trouble Don't Last Always featuring Buddy Guy
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (07:48) [18.36 MB]
  • 09 It's Too Late Brother
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (06:12) [14.2 MB]
  • 10 Warmin' Up
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (01:16) [2.91 MB]
  • 11 Love My Baby
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (03:39) [8.36 MB]
  • 12 I Could Have Had Religion (alternate take)
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (07:38) [17.49 MB]
  • 13 Rock Me
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (05:52) [13.43 MB]
  • 14 Lexington Movies
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (01:19) [3.03 MB]
  • 15 Got To Play The Blues
    Genre: Blues
    MP3 (07:37) [17.44 MB]
Press

review in ROLLING STONE
South Side Blues Jam, Junior Wells (Delmark 628)

An exceptional harp player who learned from Little Walter and a powerful, soulful singer, Junior Wells recorded his first album in the early Sixties for Delmark. Hoodoo Man Blue is a classic, some of the best blues Chicago has to offer and the debut for the amazing team of Wells and Buddy Guy, Dismal, mediocre efforts on Vanguard and Mercury’s Blue Rock followed.

At last, Wells has come up with another outstanding album, and it’s probably no coincidence that the record is on Delmark. With such outstanding players as drummer Fred Below Otis Spann and Buddy Guy, Junior went into the studio for an honest jam, unhampered by natty staff producers and unimaginative idea men. Most of the material seems to have been created on the spot. Wells is in great voice, although too little is heard from his harp. Spann and Below are their classic selves. Buddy appears on half of the album. Aside from his excellent guitar playing, he is an obvious inspiration for Wells.

“Trouble Don’t Always Last” spotlights both Buddy and Junior on their axes and in an improvised vocal exchange. It is a beautiful dialogue with several funny moments. At one point, Buddy starts singing lyrics with “I was born in Alabama . . .raised in Tennessee.” With genuine surprise, Junior lets out a confused “hug,” as did I, knowing that Buddy comes from an area near Baton Rouge.

But two tracks elevate this recording from excellent an essential masterpiece. They’re completely improvised; they could not have happened any other way. “Blues For Mayor Daley” begins as an autobiography. Junior sings about his birth, his first exposure to the blues, his influences and what the blues means to him. When he begins think of the brotherhood, the passion, the guts, the humanity and the love that are essential to the music and the atmosphere in which it is played, he sings about Mayor Daley. He wants to take Daley by the hand and bring him to a Monday night jam to show him real life and love. He couldn’t explain it; he’d just have to make the mayor experience it. After this six minute monologue, you not only have a very accurate idea of the power of the blues, but you have a very good notion about the particulars of Mayor Daley’s human deficiencies.

“I Could Have had Religion” begins with Junior singing about a woman and how he could have been a preacher. He seems disinterested until he lingers on the word “down” for several seconds. And down he goes. With a tortured, agonizing moan, he sings of the tragedies that have befallen bluesmen recently: Howlin’ Wolf’s hear attack, Magic Sam’s premature death and Muddy’s terrible accident. Wells has brought up a very painful topic and screams in frustration and bewilderment that he has to fight to make sleep come sometimes: he doesn’t want to have to fight for love or because he’s black and you’re white. He trails off singing “A little bit of love. That’s all I want. That’s all I need.” The band soon comes to a clumsy halt.

This is music of incredible honesty and emotion; rarely are such moments captured on tape. These tracks alone make this album very powerful and important. It is somewhat ironic, that after this record date, Otis Spann would never again enter a studio to make music. He died several moths later. Michael Cuscuna

DownBeat review

By Bobby Reed  |   Published February 2015

Junior Wells lives. The iconic blues singer and harmonica player passed away in 1998, but a reissue of his loose, raucous studio album Southside Blues Jam is yet another document proving that he won’t be forgotten anytime soon. Wells’ 1965 debut, Hoodoo Man Blues, is a classic blues album and a cornerstone release for Chicago’s Delmark label. That LP featured guitarist Buddy Guy, who would become a longtime collaborator with Wells (and later develop into a blues legend himself). Southside Blues Jam—recorded on Dec. 30, 1969, and Jan. 8, 1970—finds Wells fronting a band that includes Guy (on eight songs), guitarist Louis Myers (on nine songs), bassist Earnest Johnson, drummer Fred Below and Blues Hall of Fame inductee Otis Spann on piano. (It would be the pianist’s final studio session before he succumbed to liver cancer on April 24, 1970.) Wells is a force of nature here, whether he’s blowing mighty riffs on harmonica, bellowing a tune, squealing like an alley cat, imitating Howlin’ Wolf’s guttural delivery on “Got To Play The Blues” or exhorting his bandmates with comments like “Preach it, brother!” The original LP contained eight tracks, but this 73-minute CD reissue adds seven more, including two snippets that are brief but juicy: “Warmin’ Up” is just over a minute long, but it showcases an exciting musical conversation between Guy and Spann, illustrating how they could push each other and generate sparks. The incidental track “Lexington Memories,” which captures casual comments and jokes between takes, shows the camaraderie these musicians shared. More substantial is the muscular, six-minute bonus track “It’s Too Late Brother.” This is an example of the classic Chicago blues sound, spiked by patter in which Wells says to his pianist, “Would you do me a favor, Spann? Would you get up on the bass keys and kinda rap a little bit?” Spann complies with a rumbling, rolling motif, and then Wells yelps, “Get it! Ooo, shucks! Ain’t it nice!” That’s an understatement.

54
  • Members:
    Bass – Earnest Johnson, Drums – Fred Below, Guitar – Buddy Guy
  • Sounds Like:
    Chicago Blues
  • Influences:
    Delta Blues
  • AirPlay Direct Member Since:
    02/06/21
  • Profile Last Updated:
    01/05/24 01:03:34

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