We have tried to capture on this album what a listener would hear any monday night at Theresa's Blues Bar (now defunct) at 48th and Indiana on Chicago's Southside. The blue Monday regulars, includng Buddy Guy are joined by the late Otis Spann, the greatest blues pianist of his generation, making his last studio appearance and to whom this album is respectfully dedicated by Junior...
(Delmark Info)
It's no Hoodoo Man Blues, but it's hard to knock. After all, not only does it have Buddy Guy playing guitar all over the place sometimes with Louis Myers), but Buddy even sings on Trouble Don't Last Always. And how can you not like the last studio recording of blues piano great Otis Spann? For his part, Jr. plays some fine harp and sings up a storm, even if he is occasionally tempted into doing his James Brown, Jr. impression. Includes Stop Breaking Down/ Blues For Mayor Daley/ You Say You Love Me and more. It's over too soon.
Several of Muddy Waters‘ great sidemen — Junior Wells, Buddy Guy and Otis Spann — appear on the loose and funky “Southside Blues Jam,” originally issued by Chicago’s Delmark Records.
Funny, for all their marquee value, Wells and Guy — Buddy was born in Lettsworth, Louisiana — are very nearly overshadowed by the intricate, intelligent playing of the shoulda-been legendary Spann.
In this, his last studio appearance, Spann’s fecund blues genius is writ large. Even as Junior Wells (ever the showman) chicken-legs through each song — “I know her daddy got to be a millionaire,” he sings, “I can tell by the way she walks” — Spann never stumbles.
But Spann is only part of what makes this record important.
Recorded in December 1969 and January 1970, “Southside Blues Jam” lives up to its name — portraying a refreshing disregard for later-period blues recordings’ penchant for production. It’s roll the tapes, and let’s play.
The album recalls the old Blue Monday, where Guy was a regular, at Theresa’s Blues Bar on Chicago’s Southside. The feel of those sweaty workouts serves a blueprint for the playing and an inspiration for the album’s name.
One drawback (at least for me): No liner notes. The closest you get to that is a photograph of the boys on the back. A treat, sure, but not something that lends any perspective.
Even so, they seem june-bug happy with the proceedings in that photo — exhuberant with the memory of instruments only just now cooling off back in the studio.
In my mind, they’ve just finished “Trouble Don’t Last Always,” the almost eight-minute long closer. That song is everything “Southside Blues Jam” aspires to be as an album: Blues without the lathered-up producers and thunk-out structure.
On it, Buddy Guy is pushing, Junior Wells is pulling — and check Otis Spann: Cucumber-cool, jacket-pulled-off slick.
The gospel never sounded so blue, so jazz, so locomotive.
(by Nick DeRiso)
Plattentipp 
