Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Go Doo, That Hoodoo, That You Doo, So Well, October 27, 2006
Hoodoo Man Blues, featuring the legendary duo, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, is a fantastic CD that belongs in any blues collection worthy of the name. It's also a perfect place for blues newcomers to begin. Because the CD deftly bridges many styles - soul, funk, rock, traditional blues, and "Chicago style" - it's easier to appreciate than much of what's lumped under the "blues" heading.
Uninitiated listeners tend to enter the blues canon from one of two polar, and very limited, vantage points. The first may be thought of as the Robert Johnson, purist extreme. These listeners believe that a blues musician must be black, illiterate, hail from the Mississippi delta, and have a stage name that combines: an infirmity, a fruit, and the last name of an American president. (Blind Lemon Jefferson, Gimpy Plum Coolidge, Munchhausen By Proxy Pomegranate Taft.) He must also play acoustic guitar only, preferably with at least one missing finger.
The other extreme is the young head banger crowd which has stumbled, and I use the word advisedly, across the oeuvre of Led Zeppelin, (or worse), and somehow imagines that bloated, pompous, three-chord thrashing, pumped through amplifiers at volumes high enough to throw UFOs off course, distorted to the point of complete unintelligibility, resembles the blues. These innocents are advised to consider the extent to which television resembles education, or the likelihood of finding an honest man in Washington.
In Hoodoo Man Blues, listeners will discover what happened when delta blues traveled up river to urban centers, like Chicago, bought an amplifier, and began influencing, and being influenced by, contemporary trends. Junior Wells, a great singer and entertainer, has clearly taken a page or two from James Brown, and Buddy Guy's guitar seems to have some rock licks that want to escape. Wells, a fantastic harp player, pretty much defined the Chicago style with his harmonica, which Paul Butterfield would later carry to a wider market. In other words, this is music that blues aficionados can love, but it's also a hothouse, a snapshot of musical currents coming together.
Junior and his felt hat caught a cab, sadly, and lately Buddy Guy seems intent on doing his bad Jimi Hendrix impression. But thanks to the miracle of technology, you can get these two when they were at their very best. The remix is exceptional and vastly outpaces the original LP. Highly recommended.
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33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Greatest Blues Album Ever?, December 11, 2001
Junior Wells isn't my personal favorite as a harpist (Sonny Boy is), but this album is one of my absolute favorites in the blooze. This album is really HOT, with Junior struttin' his stuff with his mates from Chicago, including the one & only Buddy Guy. Buddy really gels with Wells on this album, not by taking solos, but by accompanying him & the actual song being played. His presence really steps up Junior, & brings out the best in him here.While Junior is a terrific blues harpist & singer, he has a real funky style that resembles James Brown. You can really hear it from the get go in "Snatch back & Hold It". The cover of "You Don't Love Me" from this album will influence a bunch of guys in Macon, GA. a few years later. I believe this was also one of the earliest "full" blues albums released, rather than a collection of singles from vinyl. Hence, the greatest blues "album" ever recorded. Yes, that is my personal opinion, but the Chicago blues rarely gets better than this. Essential for any blues collection!
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
First real blues album, October 19, 1999
By A Customer
The appeal of Hoodoo Man Blues is that it was conceived as an album instead of a hodgepodge of singles and other tracks. When Junior Wells took his backing band with him into Bob Koester's Delmark studio, he had an LP in mind. Hoodoo Man Blues sounds as if it had been recorded in at some dingy nightclub in downtown Chicago at midnight. No particular track on the album stands out above the rest. What there is here is wall-to-wall classic blues. Wells makes no apologies to the purist crowd and throws a little James Brown-esque funk into the mix. He was a harp-toting gangster. He may not have been technically as good on the harp as Little Walter, but Wells had the attitude. Wells employs ace musicians to back him up like Buddy Guy on guitar, Billy Warren on drums, and Jack Myers on electric bass.
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by Junior Wells' Chicago Blues Band 
