Sixty Years Of Hoodoo Man Blues

Tiggerlion on Hoodoo Man Blues by Junior Wells and The Chicago Blues Band released 26th November 1965

The Great American Migration took place between 1910 and 1970. Over 6 million African Americans left the rural South and moved to cities in the North and West in search of jobs and a better life. Up to 1910, 90% of black people lived in three Southern states: Louisianna, South Carolina and Mississippi. By 1970, that percentage had dropped to 50%. 

In Southern states, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities, beginning in the 1870s. African Americans faced segregation, indentured servitude, convict leasing, an increase in the spread of racist ideology and widespread lynching. Farmers and businessmen needed to find replacements for the labour force once slavery was abolished. Indentured servitude dates back centuries but black men and women were still subjected to it in the South. An individual ‘volunteers’ to pay off some kind of debt by working. The debts were often tenuous and their size and length of payback frequently increased at the whim of the person providing the loan, creating a form of financial slavery. Women, in particular, were vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Convict leasing was even more destructive. Many Southern legislatures passed Black Codes to restrict free movement of black people and force them into exploitative employment. If convicted of vagrancy, black people could be incarcerated. They were also subjected to prison sentences for a variety of petty offenses. Corrupt and racist policing, legal systems and sentencing guaranteed a flow of able-bodied men that the states leased to employers at $2 a day. White farmers and business owners profited by the use of forced labour at less than market rates and the states had an additional source of income during years when finances were scarce. Jim Crow Laws institutionalised social, economic, educational, and political disadvantages. Most African Americans were second-class citizens, allegedly based on a principle of ‘separate but equal’. Southern states implemented the laws vigorously and twisted them to ensure that black facilities, such as bus services, were inferior. Racism was allowed to run wild. The Ku Klux Klan thrived. Nearly 3,500 African Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1968.

At the same time, rural farming changed dramatically. Most ex-slaves continued to work for landowners in a system called sharecropping. Charges for the land, supplies, equipment and housing were deducted from the sharecroppers’ portion of the harvest, often leaving them with debt to the landowners in bad years. The contracts were heavily weighted towards the white landowner and, before long, many sharecroppers were trapped into debt slavery. Cotton prices fell dramatically after the stock market crash of 1929, causing widespread bankruptcies. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 offered farmers money to produce less cotton to increase prices. Many, predominantly white, landowners kept the money and allowed the land previously worked by sharecroppers to remain empty. They also invested in mechanisation, reducing the need for labour and leaving more, mainly black families, in abject poverty. Boll weevil infestations became rife. The beetle lays eggs inside the cotton boll which is then completely destroyed, seeds and all, by the developing larvae and pupae, safe from insecticides. It was so pernicious, it took nearly ninety years for farmers to get it under control.

During and after World War I, there was a decline in European immigrants and a recruitment drive into the military which resulted in thousands of available jobs in steel mills, railroads, meatpacking plants, and the automobile industry. The pull of good, solid work in the North and West was increased by the offer of special incentives to encourage black workers to relocate, including free transport and low-cost housing. Wages could be double or more. The attraction for many Southern land workers was irresistible. Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, and New York City were the main beneficiaries.

As the population moved, so did its culture. Big Bill Bronzy was a sharecropper whose ability to make a living was blighted by drought. He moved to Chicago in 1920, where he switched from the fiddle and learned how to play guitar. By the forties he had honed his skills to appeal to a city audience as well as people that shared his country roots. Muddy Waters served his musical apprenticeship in the Delta and moved North in 1943. He recalled arriving in Chicago as the single most momentous event in his life. Soon, he was Bronzy’s opening act in the South Side clubs. Willie Dixon learnt the Blues as a youngster on a convict lease in Mississippi before relocating in 1936. He played the double bass, a career interrupted by a spell in jail because he refused to fight for his racist country in WWII. Thereafter, he took to songwriting and record producing for Chess. Howlin’ Wolf learnt his trade as a protegé of Charley Patton and was persuaded to move to the home of Chess Records in 1952. 

When these Delta Bluesmen arrived in the rowdy, noisy clubs of the city, they found their acoustic guitars could not be heard. They needed more volume. Bronzy plugged in his guitar in 1942. Waters knew immediately he needed amplification and hired a full electric band in 1943, complete with bass and drums. Sometimes, amplification wasn’t enough. Volumes were pushed to the limit, to the point of distortion. Soon, vocals, guitar, bass were all plugged into amplifiers in the clubs, alongside acoustic drums and piano. In addition, the musicians and singers became more aggressive and much more assertive. The vocals snarled and the instruments roared.

The city crowd had different demands. In post war America, the work was hard but there was more money to spend. They wanted to be entertained and to party. As singer and guitarist Kevin Moore put it, “You have to put some new life into it… You can’t keep talking about mules, workin’ on the levee.” The music itself crackled with energy, bristled with confidence and the tempo increased to thrill. Guitarists, like Hubert Sumlin for Howlin’ Wolf, experimented with a more extended palette of notes than the standard six-note blues scale. Little Walter had been raised in Louisianna where he learnt harmonica and guitar at the elbow of Sonny Boy Williamson and arrived in Chicago in 1946. Frustrated at being drowned out by the electric guitars, he cupped a small microphone in his hands along with his harmonica and plugged the microphone into the public address system, generating radical, previously unheard, tones and sonic effects. It was as though he’d created a new instrument. The beat was a solid 4/4 most of the time but grooved with more of a “jazz feel” while the bass was heavy and rolling. It was bold, it was brash, and it was sexy. It asserted a black pride, a defiant rejection of repression and a celebration of black ingenuity. Chicago Blues became a commercial success both live and in the studio. Labels like Vee-Jay and Chess nurtured a wealth of talent. Major companies such as Paramount Records, RCA Victor, and Columbia Records promoted it widely. It begat Rhythm ‘n’ Blues and Rock ‘n’ Roll, with many Blues players performing on Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley records. It thrived across black America but remained largely segregated and ignored by the mainstream music industry until it inspired UK beat groups such as The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and The Animals and was brought back to the US by the British Invasion.

By 1965, however, UK Pop/RnB artists were dominating the charts and radio, alongside the Pop/Soul Detroit juggernaut, Tamla Motown. Arising out of Washington, another Northern city with a large African American population, Atlantic Records was focused on Jazz, R&B and Soul, and had a distribution deal with Stax in Memphis, Tennessee. Black adults, who had grown up with the Blues, were moving on to Soul and Funk. Chicago Blues and its record companies were being squeezed. Its brief, slabs of dynamite were best served by singles or compilations, and the LP was beginning to make waves. No-one had managed to capture the raw, exciting nature of a Chicago gig in a studio setting across a whole album.

Step forward Bob Koester. He was born in Kansas and went to St. Louis university. An enthusiastic collector, he opened a record shop, Jazz Record Mart, and founded a record label, Delmark, named after the boulevard in St. Louis. He moved to Chicago in 1958 because he adored Jazz and Blues. He regularly visited the clubs on the South and West side, particularly Theresa’s Lounge. Often, he was the only white man present but his love for the music and the artists shone through. He witnessed Junior Wells in Muddy Waters’ group well after Little Walter left to front his own band. 

Wells was wild on stage, proud, malevolent, energetic, and committed, a Blues James Brown, a Hoodoo Man. He represented the seedier, darker side of the Blues, intimidating and dangerous. He had a raw, belligerent harmonica style, as if he was trying to be noticed in a strip club. Born in Memphis, he was taught the harp by his cousin, Little Junior Parker, and Sonny Boy Williamson. By the age of seven, he was extraordinarily accomplished, as the story printed on the sleeve of Hoodoo Man Blues attests.

“I went to this pawnshop downtown and the man had a harmonica priced at $2.00. I got a job on a soda truck… played hookey from school … worked all week and on Saturday the man gave me a dollar and a half. A dollar and a half! For a whole week of work. I went to the pawnshop and the man said the price was two dollars. I told him I had to have that harp. He walked away from the counter – left the harp there. So I laid my dollar-and-a-half on the counter and picked up the harp. When my trial came up, the judge asked me why I did it. I told him I had to have that harp. The judge asked me to play it and when I did he gave the man the 50 cents and hollered ‘Case dismissed!’”

He was just thirteen when he wound up in Chicago and performed with Muddy Waters as a teenager. It’s Wells playing the harp on the Chess recording of Mannish Boy in 1955. He’d also developed a deep Blues voice with R’n’B overtones. At one gig, Koester requested Key To The Highway and Waters said, “I think Junior Wells does that better than I do,” Koester thought that Wells certainly bettered Walter in the vocal department and would be ideal for recording a whole album.

Wells was given the freedom to choose all the songs, handpick the musicians and wasn’t limited to two or three minutes per song. His first decision was to recruit Buddy Guy. Guy was a similar age to Wells and had followed a similar trajectory, this time from Louisianna where his parents were sharecroppers. He first played professionally as a sideman for John “Big Poppa” Tilley, when he learned to overcome stage fright and work a crowd. He arrived in Chicago on September 25, 1957, a date that was so important to him he had it engraved on all his guitars. He, too, came under the influence of Muddy Waters, but it was Otis Rush who first gave him a break, arranging for him to perform at the 708 Club on the South Side. Inspired by Guitar Slim’s outlandish stage persona, Guy exploited a 100 foot guitar cable to jump up onto the bar and strut his stuff along its full length whilst firing off solos. He could play anything in any style, including Ragtime, Country Blues, Urban Blues, Jazz, Folk songs and Spirituals, a range of music far wider than any Bluesman before or since. Unusually for a Chicago Blues guitarist, he preferred a smooth, clean sound, playing both lead and rhythm at the same time, with considerable skill. He was signed to Chess and his flexibility was taken advantage of. He was used as a house musician on other people’s records, rather than as a lead artist in his own right. Nevertheless, Guy did not want to break his contract and asked Koestler to check with Leonard Chess to make sure there was no conflict. Chess’s reply was “OK, go ahead but he doesn’t sing and you don’t use his name!” The pseudonym, Friendly Chap, was suggested by Peter Brown, an English Blues fan, on a sabbatical with Jazz Record Mart as part of a cultural exchange programme. “A buddy is a friend, a guy is a chap.”

Jack Myers was an electric Blues bass innovator. He liked to use three metal strings and one nylon. Guy described how he was recruited in Guitar World magazine. “When the Fender bass first came along, I remember seeing this kid Jack Myers play it with Earl Hooker’s band. Hooker actually owned the bass, so the only time that boy could play, he had to work with Earl Hooker. But I found out that Willie Dixon had a Fender bass that he’d pawned at a place on 47th and State. So I told that boy, ‘If you wanna play with me, I’ll go get that Fender out of pawn from Dixon.’ And I gave it to Jack, ’cause he was a good little bass player.” He was more than good. He was truly innovative, adapting his technique to Guy’s single string open style, rather than a strum, which left more space for the bass to fill. Myers would play melody patterns to keep the rhythm and throw in some impressive runs whenever there was a pause between Guy’s licks. He kept the music connected and the sound full, despite having fewer musicians in the band. He and Guy worked with each other for many years, but Hoodoo Man Blues was the first time they recorded together.

Billy Warren was in his mid-forties by 1965. He was a veteran of the Maxwell Street Market where the Chicago Blues began. Blues drummers are easily overlooked. Shuffle beats in strict 4/4 time sound deceptively easy to play. After all, the genre doesn’t allow for flashy drum solos or experiments with time signatures. Warren had, however, been schooled in Jazz and added some subtleties within the Blues limits that made him a sought-after drummer. He was also a life and soul of the party kind of guy, as was Myers. They made a great team. Warren would play drums solo at Theresa’s Place and call Wells and Guy up onto the stage to play with him when they were still barely known.

By the time they convened in the studio on the 22nd and 23rd September 1965, they all knew each other well. They were also very familiar with the material. At the time, song authorship was fluid for the Blues. Much like Folk music, many songs are born from a tradition dating back hundreds of years. Up to this point, royalties were never a way to make a decent living for the writers of Blues music. Selling records and tickets to gigs were far more important. Songs would be borrowed, embellished and adapted as the years went by. Producers and managers, mostly white, would claim a credit in exchange for studio time and distribution. Only two songs of the twelve on Hoodoo Man Blues were not claimed to be an original or an arrangement of a traditional when the album was first issued. However, Junior Wells wrote very few original Blues, borrowing liberally from others, especially his mentor Sonny Boy Williamson. Whatever the writing credits, it was the attitude that mattered.

The opener, Snatch It Back And Hold It, thunders out of the speakers. A gauntlet is thrown to challenge James Brown’s new bag of tricks revealed a few months earlier. Warren’s stop-start rhythm incorporates Soul and Funk in a tremendous groove with a few soft Jazz elements. The guitar is a surprise. It sounds like no other Blues guitar, light and skippy, confident but polite. Myers’ bassline is beefy, dominant, driving. Wells grabs the spotlight immediately and wrings its neck. The song’s subject matter is typical of the kind of Blues Wells liked. The singer is boastfully satisfying a woman, while being careful not to impregnate her. He growls and purrs like a salacious, predatory big cat and his harmonica solo is a hair-raising roar. This is a band dazzling with technique that can compete with The Famous Flames and a frontman with charisma more than the equal of Brown, whose harmonica could replace no less than nine horn players. Junior Wells’ big bad Bluesman persona is perfectly matched by the musicians’ swagger.

Ships On The Ocean is a Wells’ song written and performed in traditional Blues style, slow and mournful. The protagonist is lonely and missing his girl. Unusually for The Blues, he’s a sailor whose determination to see his love again involves dragging himself across the sand having had his legs bitten off by a shark. If that seems unlikely, bear in mind that the ship is made of paper. The lyric is delivered with a straight face, the dark, stormy moans and howls tapping into a deep pain in his heart not the remains of his legs. Guy’s guitar is nuanced but hums with power, and the rhythm section maintain a discrete distance as though taking a step back from someone suffering a breakdown. Ships On The Ocean taps into the vulnerable side of The Blues with a twist. This is as brazen as Snatch It Back in its way. Look at what he’s prepared to go through to win his love.

The age of consent was decided by state legislature. By 1920, most set it at the age of sixteen. Some had a proximity rule meaning that if both parties were within a couple of years of each other it was legal. A few insisted on participants being over eighteen. Georgia was an exception. Its age of consent remained at fourteen until 1995. In 1918, Mandatory School Attendance laws were passed so that a schoolgirl could be seventeen or eighteen. However, the drop out rate was highest in poorer states. Typically, the lowest graduation rates were Nevada, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was a cornerstone of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” designed to narrow the quality gap in education. It was signed into law April 1965. By the time Junior Wells recorded Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, the song was nearly thirty years old and he credited it to Traditional – public domain, though it is a Sonny Boy Williamson composition. The word Little in the title refutes any suggestion this might be a song about a womanly looking youngster. Rod Stewart had released an innocent version the year before for his first single when he was just nineteen. Wells, though, was quite obviously an older man drooling with desire. “Ooohwee!” he cries, “I can’t help myself.” Myers’ bassline is extraordinary, carrying the melody and giving it a dance impetus. Guy and Wells exchange lustful guitar and harmonica licks. It’s a gripping and disturbing listen for 21st Century ears and quite a relief when she rejects his inappropriate advances. It is a song that has had many lives, through acoustic versions, popping up on Muddy Waters Folk Singer album, and crossing over into Rock & Roll with Larry Williams in 1958. Wells and The Chicago Blues Band gave The Yardbirds, Mannfred Man and The Animals the correct template for the emerging Rock style. Their weedy versions were considerably beefed up when later played live. In 1990, Williamson’s original recording of Good Morning, School Girl was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in the “Classics of Blues Recordings – Single or Album Track” category.

Hound Dog has a more fractious history. Johnny Otis had been charged with kickstarting Big Mama Thornton’s singing career. She was a bawdy comedienne, big and domineering, a woman who talked in innuendos and took no prisoners. He invited a young songwriting team, Lieber and Stoller, to meet her at rehearsals. They were taken aback by “the biggest, baddest, saltiest chick you would ever see,” who had a huge, booming voice. It took them twelve minutes to write a song to fit her character, one in which she growls at a leach of a man. Her recording is spare, just guitar, bass and drums, no horns of any kind. She embellished it with pieces of spoken word and encouraged the band to bark and howl towards the end. It was a huge hit, one of the bestselling records of 1953. There were numerous response songs, imitations and covers. Elvis Presley scored his biggest hit with it in 1956, shifting ten million units. It is probably the song most involved in litigation, chasing all those royalties. Here, it is credited to Big Mama Thornton, though she admitted: “They gave me the words, but I changed it around and did it my way.” Wells may have wanted to emphasise its Blues roots and was confident enough to take on a song written for an outspoken woman upending gender and sexuality expectations as she unceremoniously dismisses a trifling man. Guy keeps time, staying cool as Warren splashes his cymbals and ripples through his kit. Myers adds some nice variation and bounce but this is rough, ready and bordering on the frantic, musically similar to Elvis’s Rock & Roll but lyrically faithful to Thornton.

In The Wee Wee Hours is a fabulous, tortured Blues, tossing and turning in the middle of the night. It has few words. All the expression is in the yearning harmonica, the sorrowful guitar lines and the grace and dignity of the funereal bass and drums. Its simplicity is heartbreaking. It is a perfect example of how the acoustic Blues of the South was converted to the electric Blues of the big city. Its pain is universal and the straightforward arrangement is common to both but the updated sound gives it an immediacy and edge that appealed to a wider audience. It hardly bears any relation at all to the 1942 Big Bill Bronzy song Wee Wee Hours Blues, which is jaunty and upbeat.

The Jazz greats of the 1930s, including Count Basie and Louis Armstrong, loved Oh Lawdy Mama. Buddy Moss is probably responsible for the earliest recording, but the song may well date to WW1. With additional words, Bumble Bee Slim made it into Meet Me In The Bottom, then Freddie King adjusted it to See See Baby. Willie Dixon transformed it into the classic Down In The Bottom for Howlin’ Wolf. Wells and Guy put their own stamp on it, calling it Hey Lawdy Mama, but its the rhythm section that shines. It could be Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts. Myers and Warren are as one, providing a Rock undercarriage on which the star players can excel. Wells is relaxed vocally, despite his woman going out late at night for who-knows-what, but his harp playing is bitter and angry. Guy’s chicken scratching seems to wind him up more. This song and this recording witness the birth of Rock. Cream performed a cover of Hey Lawdy Mama for the BBC in December 1966. Later they recorded a version using Wells lyrics, but with a different backing arrangement. Once Wells’ lyrics and melody were replaced, they were left with Strange Brew.

Hoodoo is a complex belief system developed in America by enslaved Africans, taken from ancient superstitions and rituals and incorporating Christian practices. Its chants and spells resemble prayers and hymns. It was frowned upon and supressed by white slave owners, but it continued to flourish as it offered the believer a sense of control in a life defined by restrictions and suppression. Hoodoo doctors, both men and women, were significant figures in many communities, using roots, powders, and rituals to cast conjures for protection and medicines for healing. The crossroads represent an important transition in Hoodoo and the mojo was a bag of magical spells. Songs were central to its oral history and became a significant part of the development of the Delta Blues. Lost love, betrayal and revenge were themes common to both, and repeated misfortune was explained by conjures, spells and curses, solved by engaging the Hoodoo Man or, in extreme cases, making a pact with the devil himself. This aspect of African American culture travelled North during the great migration, mainly in the capable hands of women. It followed Wells to Chicago. Hoodoo Man Blues, credited to Wells, is effectively a cover of Sonny Boy Williamson’s Hoodoo Hoodoo. The singer personifies the Hoodoo Man but his woman leaves him for another man. The reason is that somebody Hoodoo’d the Hoodoo Man or cast a spell on him. The rhythm is upbeat. The harmonica bounces and spins like a gymnast. Guy had a problem with his amplifier and, while engineer Stu Black repaired it in the control room, he wired him through the Leslie system of the Hammond B-3 in the studio just as George Harrison did with The Beatles. If it hadn’t been the last song they recorded for the album who knows what they might have done with that organ sounding guitar.

Early In The Morning is a very different Williamson cover, this time credited to Traditional, based on Soon This Morning, first recorded by Charlie Spand in 1929. Before that, Leroy Carr’s Truthful Blues contains many similar elements. Williamson deployed a call-and-response style, his voice alternating with his harmonica. Wells recorded a version in 1954 for States Records, calling it Bout The Break Of Day, with Muddy Waters and Louis Myers on guitar, Otis Spann piano, Willie Dixon bass and Fred Below drums. Remarkably, The Chicago Blues Band eclipses that stellar line up, by stretching it out, kicking off their shoes and allowing their fingers do the talking on a prolonged instrumental epilogue. The vocal is better developed, dripping with lust, and the song much better paced, thanks to Myers’ carefully measured bassline and Warren’s laidback position, just behind the beat, one later adopted by many Rock drummers. Without a piano, guitar and harmonica have plenty of room to trade solos oozing with class. It’s a definitive performance.

Get Ready is an instrumental variation of Yonder Wall, the closing track, which was originally titled Get Ready To Meet Your Man. It’s a bright, pellucid performance with a very neat guitar solo and a relaxed harmonica. It feels like a tune that Guy messed around with to get the fingers moving and to warm up the rest of the band, one that became so familiar it formed part of their muscle memory. It is credited to Guy, Wells.

Bo Diddley released She’s Fine, She’s Mine in 1955. Willie Cobbs made a few minor changes and retitled it You Don’t Love Me to claim it as his own for a single in 1960. From there, it has followed two very different paths. One was via Coxsone Dodd in Jamaica in a cover with Dawn Penn. His conversion of the rhythm into Reggae inspired Big Youth’s Screaming Target and a later Dancehall version again by Dawn Penn, emphasising its No No No refrain. In turn, Rihanna was inspired to cover it and Beyoncé sang it on the I Am… tour. It was a staple of Wells’ stage show. Guy changed Diddley’s distinctive guitar figure and Wells edited the lyric, calling it You Don’t Love Me, Baby. He felt his input deserved sole authorship, though Cobbs’ recording was only five years old and Diddley’s was five years before that. Warren is right on the beat, sitting upright on his stool, Myers jauntily bouncing the song along. For a man apparently losing in love, Wells sounds light-hearted. By the final verse, he can’t wait to usher her out the door, shoed along by Guy’s snappy guitar. John Mayall followed the Wells version on the album A Hard Road with Peter Green on vocals. Al Kooper and Stephen Stills turned it into early heavy metal, Stills riffing like Hendrix. The Allman Brothers were inspired to put it in their setlist, becoming a highlight of At Filmore East in a medley with Soul Serenade. Bo Diddley is most famous for the rhythm that bears his name and has inspired so many Rock songs but She’s Fine, She’s Mine has proven to be almost as inspirational.

Kenny Burrell, a Jazz guitarist, released Midnight Blue in 1963. Its calling card and opening track is Chitlins Con Carne, with a hint of bossa nova from Roy Barreto on congas and featuring some nimble playing by Stanley Turrentine on saxophone and Burrell himself. It’s a surprise to find it covered here and properly credited. They keep it brief. Guy marks a strict 4/4 time and Warren is on his cups while Wells indulges himself playing both the Burrell and Turrentine roles. He’s so pleased with himself, he takes a pause from blowing his harmonica at the halfway point to exhale a very satisfied “Yeaaah.” They don’t swing, they rock.

Yonder Wall is another song with a long history completely transformed on this album, credited to Traditional. Elmore James’ arrangement recorded in 1961 was much copied. It follows a traditional Blues style and, unusually for James, has a distinctive harmonica part played by Sammy Myers. The song tells the tale of a disabled man who is excluded from the draft but isn’t too disabled to service the ladies whose husbands have gone to war. Looking over yonder wall, the adulterous couple can see the husband returning home. The Chicago Blues Band speed the song up with a bouyant bass figure and a backbeat. Comparing the two versions just four years apart, you can hear the Blues morphing into Rock. Wells’ vocal and harmonica grunts and moans suggest the couple have almost been caught in flagrante. It closes the album, back where it started with Wells bedding a woman, but, this time, forced to make a swift exit.

The album eventually sold over a million copies, Delmark’s best seller, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 2008. Hoodoo Man Blues captured the spontaneity of a live performance, tapping into a mood of confident positivity in Black America. It took the electric Blues into a new realm and was very popular with its target audience in Chicago and beyond, consolidating African American music as the most influential and innovative in the world. It is deeply rooted in Black culture, an LP conceived, crafted and delivered as a whole album, performed by black Americans who knew no other kind of life nor way of being. Wells was prone to grotesque exaggeration but he sang the truth. The Chicago audience knew exactly where he was coming from and found him easily relatable. His life was theirs. The Chicago Blues Band were seen as a new generation in electric Blues. By adapting the work of their mentors, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Big Bill Bronzy, they effectively created a new genre that would dominate the world and rekindle an enthusiasm for The Blues. A certain alchemy occurred when it caught the ear of white boys with guitars. They lived a completely different existence and knew little about Jim Crow and Hoodoo but they poured over every detail, listened closely to the clean guitar lines, the growling vocals, the electrifying harmonica, a certain roll in the bass and drums and got some ideas of their own. Hoodoo Man Blues effectively taught the Beat Groups of the sixties how to play Blues Rock. Here is the template for the Rock rhythm section. Rock may well have evolved anyway but Myers and Warren deserve the recognition of giving it the definitive platform.

The Voting Rights Act was passed and signed into the legislature on August 6, 1965, effectively ending segregation and solidifying voting rights for black Americans, making Southern states more hospitable for black people. Soon, the African American migration to the North and West would be reversed. However, the Voting Rights Act is under threat in 2025. The far right have captured the presidency, the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court. In schools, African American history is being erased, slavery being relabelled as a good thing for black people if mentioned at all. Prominent black servants of the state, including in the military are being sacked in an attack on diversity and inequality. Masked Immigrant and Customs Enforcement officers are taking people off the street, incarcerating them and deporting them, largely on the basis of their skin colour. Sixty per cent of deportations have been of legal American citizens. Incarcerated labourers in Alabama jails, mainly black, still earn a risible $2 per day, the same rate set in 1927 at the height of Jim Crow. The state of Alabama makes $450 milllion a year on goods and services provided by jailed black people. The justice system remains prejudiced. One black man is serving fifteen years in a high security prison for breaking and entering an empty building for shelter. Twenty-eight states have a three strikes law that, in practice, is applied to street crime rather than white collar, resulting in much longer sentences for black men in particular. In 2024, there were 1.5 million people in American jails, 355 per 100,000 population, the highest in the OECD. The rate for black men was 1,826 per 100,000.

Great art can be enjoyed simply by looking at or listening to it. The context of its creation can add to its appreciation. Hoodo Man Blues carries a heavy load on its slight shoulders. It is forged from decades of repression and suffering, an album so steeped in tradition that it can be regarded as a historical document. However, it sounds thoroughly modern, just as fresh and as raw, as powerful and as potent sixty years later. It tells the history of black Americans more vividly than any book and its impact on many who heard it has been seismic. Black America needs a Junior Wells Hoodoo Man to stand up and strut his stuff, to take pride and pleasure in where he comes from and to celebrate his culture and the creativity and talent of his people. It’s a jewel of the twentieth century still glittering well into the twenty-first, an album that rocked the world.

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