Word: spann
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...back about 10 years to the South Side of Chicago and some of the original stuff played by the men who made the Blues revival possible. The list of unsung heroes of the Blues is endless; but I have chosen to emphasize 3 of my favorites--keyboard man Otis Spann, Harp man Sonny Boy Williamson, and slide guitar man Elmore Jones...
...these only Otis Spann is still living. Spann is the keyboard man and co-leader of the legendary Muddy Waters Blues Band. I saw them at the Jazz Workshop about a month ago. Since Muddy likes to take it easy these days and the crowd was sparse, Spann did most of the singing. Spann lived a lot of his life in Mississippi and his singing and piano style reflect his past. His Southern accent is heavy and his voice is a mixture of pain and suffering--and the ironic sense of humor which is essential to the Blues. His style...
This song is in the classical Chicago style. Spann sings about his woman who mistreated him and plays lead on the piano, being backed up by Muddy Waters on bottleneck guitar and George Smith's harp, and the rest of the band. The mood created is mournful and sad, but determined. Spann's voice expresses the stoic posture so characteristic of the Blues; and his piano style is slow and shuffling as if expressing the long lonesome journey he is beginning in the song...
Sonny Boy Williamson, Otis Spann, and Elmore James knew these ideas instinctively. When Elmore James shouts the lyrics about his no good woman over the driving beat created by his rhythm section and then cuts loose with a barrage of savage notes he renders literary descriptions meaningless. Every man regardless of taste in music must be moved by the emotion and power of Elmore James' performance...
...blues created by these men-and by dozens of others, such as Jimmy Cotton, Otis Spann, Big Walter Horton, Johnny Shines and Homesick James Williamson-inevitably touch on everyday matters of Chicago ghetto life. Sometimes the lyric is as topical as a newspaper headline, as in Junior Wells's Vietcong Blues, about his brother in Viet Nam ("You know they say you don't have no reason to fight, baby,/ But Lord, Lord, you think you're right"). But social comment is only a faint note in the sound of Chicago blues. For the most part...