Hoodoo Man Blues would be my second Junior Wells album, a mail-ordered blind-shot that still rewards my good fortune two decades after I first came across it. I knew next to nothing of Junior back then, only that after
Drinkin TNT and Smokin Dynamite blew my mind, I needed more Wells in my library. Armed with my Triangle mail order catalog, I decided on
Hoodoo Man Blues because Junior and Buddy had covered that tune on the
Drinkin TNT album. That was my research. I had a catalog and figured I could throw a dart.
Fact is,
Hoodoo Man Blues required a leap of faith all along.
Junior had been recording for a dozen years by the time he cut his debut album for Delmark. The States label had gotten him first, back in '53, and had been hoping Junior would prove their answer to Little Walter, who was then riding high on his success with
Juke. Junior was already a south side fixture by then, having spent three years blowing in joints like the C & T Lounge, the Hollywood Rendezvous, and the Zanzibar, in front of the Aces or behind Muddy Waters. He was still a teenager when he first recorded for States (he would only have three sessions with them, 2 formal and 1 demo...) From the 1953 session came Junior's first pass at Hoodoo Man Blues, with guitar work courtesy of Elmore James.
Then life slams on the brakes. Wells gets drafted into the Army. Magic Sam would share the same setback just a couple years later (Freddie King would be spared for being flat-footed). Junior didn't think much of soldiering and was in the stockade almost as often as he is Absent Without Leave. He is in fact AWOL in April of '54 for his second United recording session, when he is backed by Muddy, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, and Louis Myers. From that session, among others, came the haunting
So All Alone and
'Bout the Break of Day, which will evolve into
Early in the Morning when Junior cuts it for
Hoodoo Man Blues.
A Medical Discharge in 1955 saves Junior from being brought up on desertion charges.
Two years later, when Junior shows up on the Chief label, he's sporting a different sound, courtesy of his new producer, Mel London. London had caught Wells' act with a reconvened Aces (with only Dave Myers remaining from the original lineup).
"So he explained to me," Wells remembered of London, "he didn't have no money or nothing like that, but he would give me $500...to record for him. So I said okay 'cause I'm ready to do anything so I can get something to start going for myself."
Junior would cut a slew of sides for London over the next four years. Sown through these titles are some wonderful cuts and at least a couple undisputed classics (e.g.
Little By Little, Messin With The Kid, and
Prison Bars All Around Me, a reworking of his
So All Alone single for States). Unfortunately, much of what Junior recorded through this period didn't use him to potential and ends up reeking of mediocrity.
Let's be clear: Mel London didn't want to make blues records so much as he wanted to sell singles. The classic-era Chicago sound was waning, rock and R&B/soul were what were making the sales. London was pitching Wells at the younger, predominantly African-American R&B crowd and to do that he emphasized Junior's "soul brother" vocal style and reeled his harmonica way back in. That they managed to produce much of the solid material that they did owes more to Junior's talent than London's production.
Junior Wells was a bluesman, not a South Side Sam Cooke, and if folks wanted to her him with that harp off the leash, they needed to be catching him at Theresa's Lounge. At 43rd and Indiana, Theresa's was a converted basement
apartment several steps below street level. Run by Theresa Needham, the lounge "had no bandstand, no ticket window, unreliable plumbing, an assortment of beer and liquor signs for brands the house no longer carried, and Christmas lights all year long..." Starting around 1958 and continuing for two decades, Junior would call Theresa's his home base.
Theresa's didn't have a cover charge on Monday nights and its Blue Monday jam sessions were the stuff of legend, featuring regulars like Little Walter, Sunnyland Slim, and fiery young gun, Buddy Guy. Following a coworker's suggestion, Delmark's Bob Koester went looking for Junior at Theresa's (finding him, to his delight, blowing harp with Little Walter.)
"We were really scuffling in those days," Koester remembers, "and
any recording session screwed up the JRM budget for months. I finally decided the music was just too damn good not to record!"
Koester wanted what he was hearing at Theresa's. His vision for what would become
Hoodoo Man Blues was to capture, with studio-quality sound, the loose, raucous, up from the guts playing that was still tearing it up in the clubs. Precious few records at that time were even trying to catch that vibe. Electric blues just wasn't selling like it used to; its predominantly African American market was going for Motown and soul.
Koester would later recall, "I told Junior he could pick his repertoire, his sidemen, and did not have to limit himself to two or three minutes per song." Koester's implication about not worrying about those two or three minutes is precisely what would make
Hoodoo Man Blues such a pivotal album. His implication understates a shift in how electric blues would be recorded--and especially how it would be marketed.
If Junior wanted to be successful at recording the music his African American audiences at Theresa's was still loving, he'd have to be selling it to white folks. For a decade (especially), electric blues records were released as 45rpm singles, usually regionally-marketed to black audiences, and always with the hopes that they would be stocking juke boxes in these same neighborhoods. Koester was telling Junior not to worry about cutting commercial singles, because Delmark wasn't going to be releasing singles.
Junior refused to sign an exclusive contract with Delmark, which I feel suggests Junior's thoughts on Delmark's chances for success.
When Koester first approached Junior, labels like Arhoolie and Koester's own Delmark had been fueling the country blues revival, among white folkies, since at least 1960. While their sales had never been more than modest, their approach was different: packaging LP's (rather than singles) to a specialized, largely-Caucasian market. The LP format allowed the folkies to access collected works by obscure bluesmen (as Robert Johnson was in 1961, when
King of the Delta Blues Singers was first released...) or to receive proper introduction to bluesmen only just then being discovered, such as Mississippi Fred McDowell. Virtually none of the tracks included on these LP's (nor indeed most of their artists) would have stood a snowball's chance in cracking the singles market. Packaged as an album, however, they became a salable commodity. Non-commercial recordings just became commercially-viable.
By the summer of '65, that same folk scene was getting turned on to electricity. This was the summer of Dylan's electric set at Newport (backed by the Butterfields). It was the summer of
Like a Rolling Stone and
I Can't Get No Satisfaction.
It was clearly time to give the folkies what was going on in Chicago.
Hoodoo Man Blues would provide one of the opening salvos--and one of its most potent. This was a Junior that practically no one outside of the club scene had ever witnessed, unfettered and deliciously primal. Here was the Junior Wells who blew a percussive, powerhouse harp and sang with such soul and humor. Here was the Hoodoo Man.
As convened, the Junior Wells' Chicago Blues Band was a quartet. Junior and Buddy Guy. Jack Myers on bass and Billy Warren on drums. They would produce an album that starts of ripping, never lets up, and never once tried to slip in an indifferent cut.
Junior would always catch grief (though seldom to his face) over his James Brown influences. These influences on this album are most evident and immediately clear on this LP's first cut, the proto-funk
Snatch It Back and Hold It. This was a Chicago blues band most had not heard before. As for Junior's vocals, well, he wasn't even trying to hide his Brown. It is with the second track, the slow blues Ships on the Ocean, that we begin to reap the benefits of the "non-commercial" approach to these sessions. It's a gem, giving Junior especially the space to go deep and land squarely on a comedic exclamation point. Giving a nod to one of his primary influences, Good Morning Little Schoolgirl updates the Sonny Boy Williamson original by kicking up the tempo and giving it a dose of soul.
The album would prove heavy on covers, from the venerable
Hound Dog to Big Joe Turner's
In the Wee Hours. They mine Willie Cobbs for
You Don't Love Me and Big Boy Crudup for
Yonder's Wall. They will stamp their names indelibly on each. One of the best examples of this would be the aforementioned In the Wee Hours. Junior's version owes more to Big Walter Horton than to Big Joe Turner, and it swept both away, providing one of the album's higher points.
Wells offered himself similar treatment by updating (and supplanting) a pair of his States-era sides,
Early in the Morning and
Hoodoo Man Blues, reworking both into grittier, more fully-realized outings. The album flows nicely, offering a smooth balance of material, from the up-tempo romps of
Hound Dog and
You Don't Love Me to the slow burn of
Wee Hours and the swaggering strut of
Lawdy Mama and
Snatch It Back.
Harp player Sugar Blue would later remember of Junior, "He had such a power in him, such an emotive presence, that even listening to him on a record you could almost see him." The best of Wells' albums would always achieve that immediacy, that presence, and
Hoodoo Man Blues was perhaps its first, best document.
The rhythm section rarely gets noticed in discussions of this album, which strikes me as a sin. Warren plays in a tight, unfussy style and knew when to snarl. Jack Myers is perhaps the unsung hero of this mix. His playing is a fluid anchor, driving without once being obtrusive.
Buddy Guy ends up being remembered for this album almost as much as does Junior, which is not a bad feat for a man whose name didn't even appear on this LP's original pressing. He earned every accolade he received for this album. His playing here is superlative. Much has been said of the "'60's rock sound" of his guitar on some of these tracks, a tone most often described as "shimmering." It was the result of a happy accident. Early in the session, Guy's amplifier malfunctioned, forcing some fortunate improvisation. As the sound engineer hurriedly tried to repair Buddy's amp in the booth, they wired the guitar through the Leslie speaker of the studio's Hammond B-3 organ. Six months after its release, white San Francisco hippies were copping Buddy's licks from this album.
Buddy famously appeared as "Friendly Chap" on this album's original release. And it was a mistake prompted by a misconception. Buddy was concerned over his appearance on the album because he believed he was under an exclusive contract to Chess. As it happens, Buddy didn't actually have an exclusive agreement with Chess (very few of their artists actually did, though the brothers Chess did little to discourage this misconception among their musicians...) To allay Guy's concerns, Koester called Chess and received a response, supposedly originating from Phil, that approved Buddy's participation so long as "he doesn't sing and his name doesn't appear." This proved to be a miscommunication on Chess Records' part. Phil had never objected to Buddy getting his
Hoodoo Man credit.
By 1965, marketing a blues album to the folk and rock audiences was by no means a revolutionary concept, though it may as well have been.
Hoodoo Man Blues would prove to be one of a handful of albums that helped reignite an interest in electric blues. It promptly became Delmark's best-selling album. The best part of a half century later, it has refused to surrender this throne.
In 1953, Junior would later tell a reporter, when this album's namesake was a 78rpm single and was presented for possible rotation, radio personnel "...rejected it violently, throwing it to the floor and stomping on it." A dozen years later, Koester had to talk Junior into re-recording it, one of the few instances during these sessions when Koester advocated for specific material. Wearing the same title,
Hoodoo Man Blues the album would launch Junior Wells at a whole new world.
Peace, Mudcatz
Junior Wells Chicago Blues Band
Hoodoo Man Blues
Delmark, 19651. Snatch It Back and Hold It
2. Ships On The Ocean
3. Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
4. Hound Dog
5. In the Wee Hours
6. Hey Lawdy Mama
7. Hoodoo Man Blues
8. Early in the morning
9. We're Ready
10. You Don't Love me Baby
11. Chitlin Con Carne
12. Yonder Wall
13. Hoodoo Man Blues, alt.
14. Chitlin Con Carne, alt.
NOTE: At Delmark's request, I've removed the link for this album. Please help support the industry that has done so much for us. --Peace, M.
Hoodoo Man Blues may be purchased here:
http://www.delmark.com/delmark.612.htmFace it: Junior Wells? Buddy?
This album? Your collection's got some frigging issues if this ain't there...
Peace, M.
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