Regarded by many blues enthusiasts as the finest LP ever recorded as an album session (rather than as a collection of singles from different sessions), Hoodoo Man Blues never made the Billboard charts but over the years as a constant seller it has registered sales in six figures for Delmark, America’s longest-running independent label. The Sept. 22-23, 1965, session marked one of the first times a working Chicago blues band had ever been brought into the studio to do a whole album, and Junior Wells transferred his South Side blues club act to the studio with ease, superbly supported by Buddy Guy (showing what impressive work he could do as a sideman), bassist Jack Myers and drummer Bill Warren. Wells reached back to Sonny Boy Williamson No. 1 for the title track, ‘Good Morning Schoolgirl’ and ‘Early in the Morning’ and covered various blues hits, along with Kenny Burrell’s ‘Chitlins Con Carn’. An added spark came from Wells’ incorporation of the emerging genre called funk in some of the arrangements and especially in the track ‘Snatch It Back and Hold It’. The solid groove of the spare instrumentation throughout the LP is one of the album’s strengths.
Released on LP as Delmark DS-612, 1966.
— Jim O’Neal
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