Walking The Blues

Considered by many to be the greatest piano player the blues ever knew, Otis Spann’s best-known work was backing Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James, and others on the classic Chess sessions that defined Chicago blues. It wasn’t until 1960 that Spann got to cut an album of his own, when Nat Hento# signed him to Candid Records. Otis Spann Is The Blues was the first album released on Candid and remains one of the “nest blues records ever cut.

Walking The Blues comes from the same historic 1960 session, but wasn’t released until 1972. Despite its posthumous release and out-of-its-era artwork, the music transcended its trappings, moving esteemed critic Robert Cristgau to include it in his “essential library” of recordings from the ’50s and ’60s. Spann’s masterful, brute-force boogie is accompanied by Robert Jr. Lockwood— the only guitarist taught by Robert Johnson himself—with guest vocals from the great James “St. Louis Jimmy” Oden. The easy, natural interplay between the three friends gives this expertly-engineered recording a rare, warm intimacy that remastering engineer Bernie Grundman enhances in this new, all-analog remaster. The new packaging, which reproduces the liner notes from the album’s original release, brings the artwork back where it belongs by evoking Candid’s distin­ctive early-’60s style.