Junior Wells: Coming at You [CRAFT]

Why you'll love it

Craft cut the lacquers for this 50th anniversary edition from the original analog master tapes and pressed it on 180g vinyl in a tip-on jacket. Wells takes on "Mystery Train," "Tobacco Road" and "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" with a sharp Chicago band.

This edition

• 50th anniversary edition
• 180g vinyl
• Tip-on jacket
• Cut from the original analog master tapes
• Remastered
• Stereo mix

About the album

Junior Wells bought his first harmonica in Memphis by working a week on a soda truck, and he played like a man who knew exactly what it had cost. By 1968 he was one of the sharpest voices in Chicago blues, the frontman who could turn a club gig into a soul revue, and Coming at You is that show pressed into one record.

Samuel Charters produced it for Vanguard, and Wells brought his longtime partner Buddy Guy along with Lefty Dizz in the band. The set leans on songs he loved: Sonny Boy Williamson's "Stop Breakin' Down," Eddie Boyd's "Five Long Years," Big Maceo's "Worried Life Blues" and a strutting "Somebody's Tippin' In," with "Little By Little" and "You Don't Love Me" rounding things off in fine style. Wells handles every vocal and harp part, and "When My Baby Left Me" and "So Sad This Morning" show off his slower, moodier side.

Wells went on to tour with The Rolling Stones and kept working right up to the late 1990s. Fifty years on, this one still sounds like a Saturday night on the South Side, minus the cover charge.

Also at Kops: more Junior Wells on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Vanguard / Craft Recordings (cat# CR00095), a reissue of the 1968 album.