1 post tagged “junior wells”
Play Along With One Of The Greats
Just in case you are unfamiliar with the work of Junior Wells, I have two places you need to visit:
1) Hoodoo Man Blues is his 1965 release, and you should race right out to secure a copy. While I can't provide a personal review of all of Junior's work, I can tell you this CD is a hit.
2) Alone & Acoustic was released in the United States in 1991 by Alligator Records. This is Junior playing with Buddy Guy, and this CD shakes one of the foundations of this little blog. Let's rewind. The purpose of this blog is to offer opinions to the beginner blues harp player. And we began with the opinion that "play along with records" is common and silly advice. I label it silly because: a) you must first understand music/blues rules, and b) the harp players good enough to record are too good for you to accompany. You can't keep up when you are a beginner. I stand by that theory, but I also have an open enough mind to say, "You really can learn by playing along with Alone & Acoustic."
Junior isn't getting paid by the note on the CD. The harp sound is clean (rare, right? . . . we love it when the blues harp sounds rough). The result: you can follow what he is doing. There are 15 tracks on this CD, and these are the numbers that a beginner blues harper would find interesting:
• Give Me My Coat And Shoes
• Big Boat (Buddy and Junior's Thing)
• Diggin' My Potatoes
• Rollin' And Tumblin'
• High Heel Sneakers
• Wrong Doing Woman
• Cut You Loose
• Sally Mae
• Catfish Blues
• My Home's In The Delta
• Medley: Baby What You Want Me To Do / That's Allright
