Heritage of the Blues/I Wanna Go Home

Performer: Otis Spann
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Personnel includes: Otis Spann (vocals, piano); Johnny Young, Sammy Lawhorn, Pee Wee Madison, Johnny Young, Muddy Waters (guitar); James Cotton, James Cotton (harmonica); Jimmy Lee Morris, Calvin Jones, Willie Dixon (bass); Francis Clay, S.P. Leary (drums). Pianist Otis Spann played in Muddy Waters' band from 1953 to 1970, and was instrumental in creating the electric Chicago blues sound. These 11 tracks were recorded in the mid-'60s by Down Beat magazine editor Pete Welding, and were previously released as Otis Spann's Chicago Blues on Testament Records. This reissue omits the solo Spann material from the original disc and highlights the group recordings featuring S.P. Leary, Johnny Young, James Cotton, Willie Dixon, and Muddy Waters. While not as revolutionary as the records Spann played on with Muddy in the late '50s, you can't deny this lineup of seminal Chicago bluesmen doing what they did best. ~ Al Campbell

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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