As the longest serving member of Muddy Waters' band, Otis Spann's intense, high
energy piano style lit up the legendary Chicago blues scene in the 1950s and
'60s and featured on some of the great Chess Records recordings, before he later
unleashed his mournful, wailing vocals and established himself as a
well-respected solo performer.
His mother was a guitarist who played with Memphis Minnie, but Spann and his
cousin Little Johnny Jones (also a Chicago blues stalwart) grew up playing piano
at the church where his stepfather was a preacher in Jackson, Mississippi, and
he took...