The Blues Never Die!

Performer: Otis Spann
Producer: Sam Charters
Distributor: Fantasy (distributor)

Notes: Personnel: Otis Spann (piano, vocals), James Cotton (harmonica, vocals), James Madison, "Dirty Rivers" [Muddy Waters] (guitars), Milton Rector (bass) and S.P. Leary (drums). Recorded in Chicago, November 21, 1964. Orignally released on Prestige 7391. Includes original liner notes by Pete Welding. Boasting fellow Chicago blues dynamo James Cotton on both harmonica and lead vocals, The Blues Never Die! is one of Otis Spann's most inspired albums. When this session was recorded for Prestige's Bluesville subsidiary in 1964, Spann was still best known for playing acoustic piano in Muddy Waters' band. But The Blues Never Die! (which Fantasy reissued on CD in 1990 on its Original Blues Classics imprint) shows that he was as great a leader as he was a sideman. From Willie Dixon's "I'm Ready" (a Chess gem Spann had played numerous times with Waters) and Elmore James' "Dust My Broom" to Cotton's spirited "Feelin' Good" and Spann's dark-humored "Must Have Been the Devil," Spann and Cotton enjoy a very strong rapport on this consistently rewarding date. ~ Alex Henderson

Otis Spann is considered one of blues music's greatest piano players. His career began after he settled in Chicago in the late 1940s; by the '50s he had become an ace session man for the legendary Chess label, appearing on sides by Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, and, most memorably, the great Muddy Waters. Spann would prove a key influence on the British blues boom of the 1960s, and it was through that world that he would garner his highest profile as a solo artist, even cutting an album with the Peter Green-led version of Fleetwood Mac, 1969's THE BIGGEST THING SINCE COLOSSUS. Spann died of cancer in 1970 at the age of 40.

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