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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
versions of "Juke" on iTunes
versions of "Juke" on iTunes
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kudzurunner
2741 posts
Oct 12, 2011
8:00 PM
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Interesting stuff comes up when you search out "Juke" on iTunes. Among other things, I came across a version by Junior Wells from the album "Live at Theresa's 1975" in which--in the portion sampled by iTunes--Junior does, verbatim, the break from James Cotton's "Creeper Creeps Again" on the 100% COTTON album, which was released the year before.
Joe L, since you're the resident Chicago blues historian here, I want to know if Cotton did that break first and Junior was signifying on Little Walter AND Cotton, or if the break was some Chicago "thing" of the time that both Wells and Cotton were doing. Which came first, the Cotton or the....Junior?
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Joe_L
1525 posts
Oct 13, 2011
12:41 AM
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Couldn't tell you where it came from originally. I suspect it came from Cotton's original version of the Creeper, not the Creeper Creeps Again. I can tell you that Junior never seemed shy about lifting material from other people. Lots of his tunes came from the Bluebird artists.
Many instrumentals just kind of morphed on stage or in the studio. For example, Shakey Jake played a version of Juke which began with the opening riff from Off The Wall.
Lots of people claimed to invent Juke over the years and taught it to Walter. Hound Dog Taylor claimed that Hideaway was one of his tunes. Other people swear it was theirs. Who really knows "The Truth"?
Who knows maybe Junior picked that up from one of the Blue Monday parties at Theresa's when Cotton was in the house? Considering that Junior quoted a small bit of the tune and that Cotton has recorded a zillion versions of that tune, I tend to think it was Cotton's tune.
When I lived there, it wasn't uncommon to hear harp players play an instrumental which lifted stuff from Little Walter, Big Walter, James Cotton and Junior in one tune. If you listen to guys like Good Rockin Charles, Easy Baby, Big Leon Brooks, Little Willie Anderson, Little Mac Simmons and Earring George, they all lifted from the other guys on the scene at the time.
I know this wasn't the answer you were looking for. I would ask a real historian like Dick Shurman. Like yourself, I'm just a fan that listens to lots of records from the environment that I came from.
It could even be a break from a piano player like Roosevelt Sykes. The more I listen to the older stuff, the more I realize that lots of things were lifted and adapted from guys like Sykes, Big Bill and Tampa Red.
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Last Edited by on Oct 13, 2011 12:45 AM
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