Otis Spann – Otis Spann Is The Blues

The original Candid record label lasted a mere four years, from 1960 to '64, and its 30-some LPs played a worthy role in fusing the period's music — mainly modern jazz but also blues — with the burgeoning civil rights movement.

The label's catalog has been acquired by Exceleration Music, whose reissue program starts with five expertly remastered albums: We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite (featuring Coleman Hawkins, Olatunji, and Roach's wife, Abbey Lincoln), Lincoln's Straight Ahead, and Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus plus, from the blues, Lightnin' Hopkins in New York and Otis Spann Is the Blues. The reissues include prescient notes by the original label's producer and A&R man, noted critic and author Nat Hentoff.

The American Candid label has achieved a near legendary status among the critics and the International jazz and blues public. The series was born in 1960 when Archie Bleyer, owner of the Cadence label decided to indulge his love of jazz and blues and create his own line — called Candid. Bleyer recruited Hentoff to produce the series.

Besides being Candid's first LP, Otis Spann Is the Blues was pianist/singer Spann's first album on his own, apart from Muddy Waters' band. Robert Lockwood, Jr., a teammate with Mud, provides guitar and some vocals. Their singing's so real that listeners may wonder how much a song is autobiographical and how much it's in the voice of a fictional character.

Barrelhouse and Chicago piano styles meet in Spann's gifted hands, together with imposing vocals. His frolic "Great Northern Stomp" gets its name from the studio they were using in New York's Great Northern Hotel. Does "I Got Rambling on My Mind No. 2" trace back to young Lockwood's lessons from Robert Johnson during his time with Lockwood's mother? This August 23, 1960, session led to enough extra tracks for a second LP, but it never appeared until 1972 on the Barnaby label, which by then owned Candid's catalog.

In the late 1980s, Black Lion Records in England bought the Candid catalog, subsequently selling it to U.S.-based Exceleration Music, where jazz drummer Terri Lynne Carrington is involved with A&R.

180-gram vinyl

Remastered by Bernie Grundman

Tip-on jacket

Early '60s improv jazz and blues titles on Candid return to print!

Reissue program starts with five expertly remastered albums of jazz and blues