Albums we love: Otis Spann
Otis Spann: Good Morning, Mr. Blues
There are an almost infinite number of doorways into the blues, but I was lucky enough to find the one that Chicago piano player Otis Spann held open.
The first blues album I ever bought — acting on little more than a vague tip and three surplus dollars — was Spann’s 1963 solo Copenhagen session, recorded while he was on tour as part of Muddy Waters’ band.
It was a great tip: I was knocked out. Spann’s piano work was gorgeous and nuanced, full of inventive brilliance. Powerful bass lines meshed perfectly with a teasing, lyrical right hand, full of darting flourishes. There was an explosive fluidity and an easy inevitability to his playing that was the perfect match for his laid-back, raspy voice. I had no idea a piano could be made to do those things.
As I soon found out, Spann was among the best who ever played, indisputably the greatest of the postwar era. But as great a soloist as he was, he may have been even more brilliant as an accompanist. He recorded with dozens of major blues artists, playing easily in their distinctive styles, yet always instantly recognizable for his own.
He backed harp players like Little Walter, Junior Wells, George Smith, Walter Horton and Sonny Boy Williamson. He played in brilliant bands led by Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Jimmy Rogers and Floyd Jones. He backed singers as varied as Big Joe Turner, Big Mama Thornton, St. Louis Jimmy and Victoria Spivey. He complemented major guitarists as dominant as Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker and Buddy Guy. His full discography is much longer and even more diverse. With everyone he was the perfect accompanist: always himself, always generous, making the band sound better.
So I listened to everyone he played with. Then I listened to everyone those guys played with, and were influenced by.
Soon Otis Spann had led me from Chicago to Beale Street to Houston to Crowley, LA to Central Avenue to the Mississippi Delta to the Piedmont of the Carolinas, and everywhere else the blues flourished.
Good Morning, Mr. Blues changed forever what I expected from — and found in — music.
Tom Haydon - KMHD membership team
