OTIS SPANN
One of my favorite bluesman out of postwar Chicago, voice and player. Maybe his early years in Chicago finding work and gigging and making his day wages as a plasterer put that hoarse voice sometimes into play. He only lived forty years, a real shame (1930-1970), gone to liver cancer. But during the best of those years he was the anchor on piano in Muddy Waters band, starting in 1952 and ending in 1968 when he had a few years left to try to strike out on his own.
His father was a piano player. His mother played guitar with Memphis Minnie, no less! When he had a day off from the very popular Waters band, he did session work for Howlin Wolf, Bo Diddley and many others. If only I could have drummed up his rendition of "Tin Pan Alley". It's almost the heart and soul biography of all the deepest swamp of music making. This one below will have mercy.
