Junior Wells 1957-1963

We Say...

Review by Lenny Kaye

It was just another week on the road for the blues veteran at the top of the bill, but for a wide-eyed-and-eared young'n just setting out on his professional career, playing bass for the folk singer opening the show, it was a thrilling immersion into what it must be have been like at Theresa's Lounge on Chicago's South Side. The year was 1969, the club was Ungano's on West 70th St. in Manhattan, and Junior Wells had come to town.

Wells had ridden the crest of the blues explosion in the mid '60s with an album for Delmark, Hoodoo Man Blues, featuring guitarist Buddy Guy, that had gained him a renown and audience that was hardly the insular inbred scene that was Chicago blues in the '50s. It wasn't so much that the music changed as that its appreciation broke mainstream — i.e. to white audiences who perhaps were surprised to find that this music had been there all along, awaiting discovery and celebration, and yes, as these things go, cooption.

At first regarded as "folk," which might have come as a surprise to these highly electric purveyors, and then with some reverence by British musicians like the Rolling Stones and the Animals (not to mention John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers), the "revival" nonetheless sparked employment opportunities for musicians who previously had to eke out their living on the chitlin' circuit.

Brandishing a piercing harp and a gutbucket voice, Junior had more than paid his dues. Arriving in Chicago in mid-century, by the age of 18 he'd established himself in the blues community enough so that when Muddy Waters' harmonica player, Little Walter, left to follow the success of "Juke," Junior took his place. Wells made his first solo recording for States records, and by 1957, reputedly AWOL from the army, began an association with Mel London's Chief, Profile, and Age labels, scoring an R&B hit with "Little by Little" in 1960, with Willie Dixon on background vocals. His span there represents the Chicago blues at their most earthy; the ambience London went for on his recordings was hardly different than the way it must have sounded at any afterhour blues club when the lights dimmed and the musicians passed around a bottle of Tanqueray and dug deep into those twelve bars.

Backed by such luminaries as guitarist Earl Hooker and pianist Otis Spann, the album features the first recording of Wells' signature song, "Messing With The Kid," the tell-it-like-it-is internal combustion of "I Need A Car," the mixed marriage of "Cha Cha In Blues," the barely contained despair of "Prison Bars All Around Me," and the phenomenal call-and-response with Hooker that is "Come On In This House." Junior would go on to become one of the blues' premiere spokesmen, touring with the Rolling Stones and becoming a regular on the world's stages; but I will always remember that night when I watched from the side of the stage. He didn't teach me how to sing the blues — only life's experience can gift you that — but he sure helped me hear the blue note, and the many chords to follow.