Search - Junior Wells :: Messin With the Kid: The Complete Cheif - Profile

Some great, sizzling blues here, and some inane pop as well.

Docendo Discimus | Vita scholae | 04/10/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"These late-50s and early-60s recordings for Mel London's Chief, Profile, and USA labels are available in a number of different guises. The Paula label has one, Fuel Records has one, and the P-Vine label released this collection back in 2003.



There is no major difference between any of them, though. This disc (titled "Messin' With The Kid") has a couple more tracks, alternate takes to the masters, but it's basically all the same stuff.

Producer Mel London provides some of the songs himself; the rest is mostly Wells' own originals, with a few covers of songs by Willie Dixon and Tampa Red added to the mix. And there's some juicy prime rib here, or prime Junior as it is. The sizzling 1961 single "Messin' With The Kid" is one of Wells' very best and most intense vocals performances, and the title track is a smouldering instrumental featuring slide guitarist Earl Hooker (and it's one of the few to really feature Wells' harp as well). And we get a terrific, gritty cover of "It Hurts Me Too", too, and a powerful slow blues, "I'm A Stranger".



It's a shame that London decided to downplay Junior Wells' harmonica, though, especially when he does it in favour of a hideous-sounding organ. Wells was a terrific, powerful singer, and this set presents Junior Wells the singer rather than Junior Wells the harpist, which is certainly good enough. But we could have had both his singing and his harmonica playing, which would have been better!

Songs like "You Don't Care", "I'll Get You Too," the too-sweet "One Day", and the inane "I Need a Car" are too much pop and mainstream rock n' roll for me, and probably for most other blues fans as well, which means that this set doesn't match Wells' earliest and much tougher recordings, the phenomenal early- and mid-50s sides gathered on "Blues Hit Big Town".



Still, fans of Mr Amos Blakemore will want to pick up this set in one form or another. You could have made a much stronger package by cutting half of these tracks, leaving just the cream of the crop, but it doesn't hurt to have them, of course, and any blues fan should have the original "Messin' With The Kid" in their collection. Just don't expect this to match the overall quality of "Blues Hit Big Town", or "Hoodoo Man Blues" for that matter."