CD Review: Dave Specter’s Live At SPACE (2025)

Dave Specter is the secret weapon of the contemporary Chicago blues scene. A guitarist of extraordinary talent, Specter is well-versed in, and adept at melding blues, jazz, and rock into a singular, unique style. He’s kept the flame burning for blues music in his hometown, and although he doesn’t seem to venture far beyond his Illinois base too often, he’s helped promote and support other artists as a co-founder of SPACE, the Evanston IL club that features a wealth of performers of the blues, folk, jazz, and rock persuasion. Even a glance at the club’s upcoming schedule – which includes a slate of ‘must-see’ artists like the Sun Ra Arkestra, Don Flemons, Cedric Burnside, Roseanne Cash, NRBQ, and Walter Trout – is enough to make any music enthusiast not in Chicago green with envy.

If Specter isn’t as well known to the casual blues fan, it’s not for lack of anything. The guitarist has played with some of the finest in the blues universe, artists like Sam Lay (Paul Butterfield Blues Band), Hubert Sumlin (Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist), and Son Seals, and he’s produced a slew of records by talented bluesfolk. His relationship with the legendary Delmark Records goes back roughly 35 years, and the recently-released Live At SPACE album is Specter’s 14th release with the esteemed blues label. Specter doesn’t get nearly the respect he’s earned, nor the attention he deserves, but his legion of loyal fans wait in anticipation for each new album.

Dave Specter’s Live At SPACE

Specter’s Live At SPACE isn’t his first live effort – the wonderful Live In Chicago came in 2008, and the equally-engaging Live In Europe way back in 1995 (with soulful vocalist Tad Robinson on the microphone). Still, 40 years into his career, Specter pursues growth as an artist and Live At SPACE displays a still-creative performer using his guitar as the brush and the stage as his canvas. It helps that his firecracker band, comprised of keyboardist/vocalist Brother John Kattke, bassist Rodrigo Mantovani, and drummer Marty Blinder, has developed a closeknit musical chemistry with the bandleader and is skilled enough to follow his every move on stage. The result is an entertaining and enticing live performance that would thrill any Chicago blues fan.

Live At SPACE opens with a pair of rambunctious instrumentals – “Rumba & Tonic” and “Alley Walk” – that are reminiscent of Booker T. & the M.G.’s and Stax Records. The former offers up an exotic, jazzy guitar intro and a loping rhythm that sways from one speaker to the other, with some elegant guitar licks along the way. Kattke adds a rollicking piano jam in the middle, followed by some Southern-fried keyboards. The latter song offers up more of a menacingly slow-paced, low-slung groove that allows the band to revel in some free-wheeling instrumentation like Specter’s livewire fretwork, Blinder’s jazzy brushes, and Mantovani’s fluid bass lines. It’s an invigorating performance that, at nearly six minutes, still ends too soon. A cover of the 1962 Otis Rush single “Homework,” by way of the J. Geils Band, is a clever amalgam of both versions, jazzy six-string flourishes and soulful vox vying with Kattke’s lively keys.  

(Not The) Same Old Blues

Specter’s own “Blues From the Inside Out” offers a jaunty, up-tempo performance that matches its sly lyrics to a jump-blues framework with plenty of jazzy guitar and a swinging rhythm while the original “Chicago Style” is both a reverential tribute to those who came before, from Howlin’ Wolf to Otis Clay, while establishing a Chicago blues sound for the new millennium, with vibrant guitarplay, hearty vocals, and an infectious walking rhythm. A cover of Memphis music legend Don Nix’s “Same Old Blues” (originally recorded by Freddie King) is a pastiche of 70 years of rhythm and blues history, honoring the soulful original while embellishing it with some hot licks and subtle, yet powerful Gospel-tinged keyboards. Specter’s original “March Through the Darkness” offers an uplifting, almost anthemic performance marrying a spiritual, Staples Family vibe to Specter’s gorgeous fretwork and Kattke’s soulful, Booker T-styled keyboard runs. 

A cover of the traditional folk song “Deep Elem Blues,” best known as recorded in 1935 by country outfit the Shelton Brothers, but resurrected in 1981 by the Grateful Dead as an Americana-styled excuse for extended jams, hews closer to the Dead’s version in spirit, but puts a ‘Chicago blues’ stamp on the song with a distinct Midwest vocal drawl, lively guitar strokes, and a funky groove punctuated by Kattke’s honky-tonk piano-pounding. Specter’s take on the great Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Bluebird Blues” is a blissful blues romp with heartbreak vox, late-night piano trills, and nuanced but emotionally-powerful guitarplay while Specter’s reverent take on Chicago blues legend Magic Sam Maghett’s “Ridin’ High” closes the album with an upbeat, intoxicating blend of Chicago-styled guitar pyrotechnics delivered against an exhilarating rhythm track.    

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Dave Specter may not be as well known as some of his contemporaries, but he’s been a constant presence on the Chicago blues scene for better than four decades – so long that he’s helped refine and define the city’s traditional sound with disparate elements that have expanded and improved upon what stalwarts like Tampa Red, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Paul Butterfield, and others had accomplished. Live At SPACE captures a March 2024 show by the underrated guitarist and it documents a performance without peer, as electric and entertaining a blues album as you’ll hear this year, or any other. If you’re a blues fan and haven’t yet picked up Dave Specter, you owe it to yourself to check out the transcendent performance offered by Live At SPACE. (Delmark Records, released June 6th, 2025) 

Also on That Devil Music:
Dave Specter’s Live In Chicago CD review

Buy the album from Amazon: Dave Specter’s Live At SPACE

Archive Review: Junior Well’s Hoodoo Man Blues (1965/2011)

One of a handful of bona fide classic blues LPs, Junior Wells’ Hoodoo Man Blues ushered in a new era for the genre. Although blues music was struggling commercially in the mid-1960s as a young African-American audience chose to listen to soul, and later funk rather than their “parent’s music,” a new audience would develop as young, white rock ‘n’ roll fans latched onto the blues even more strongly than they did during the short-lived folk-blues boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Along with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s self-titled 1965 debut, Hoodoo Man Blues would help write the blueprint that most blues-rock bands of the late 1960s would follow.

In retrospect, it seems like a natural, inevitable progression, but in 1965, Delmark Records’ Bob Koester was taking a big risk with the recording and release of Hoodoo Man Blues. Blues albums had, until that point, mostly been a collection of songs from an artist’s 45rpm record releases surrounded by studio filler. Hoodoo Man Blues was, perhaps, the first true document of a working blues band just cutting loose in the studio as they did on the stage at Theresa’s or other Chicago blues clubs without considering the release of a single. The album truly captured the sound and fury of the Chicago blues at that time even while pointing the music towards a new direction.   

Junior Well’s Hoodoo Man Blues

Wells’ take on Amos Blakemore’s “Snatch It Back and Hold It” would bring a new sound to the traditional Chicago blues. Displaying as many James Brown-influenced funk underpinnings as Little Walter-styled blues aesthetic, the performance placed more reliance on Wells’ funky, forceful vocals and Buddy Guy’s slippery chicken-picking as it did Wells’ normal harpwork. Another Blakemore cover, the underrated “Ships On the Ocean,” takes the standard blues sound onto darker, stormy turf with an incredibly nuanced but forceful six-string performance by Guy and mournful blasts of Wells’ harp, with the singer’s growling, Howlin’ Wolf-styled vocals reaching deep into a bottomless well of emotion.

Wells pays tribute to two of his major influences on Hoodoo Man Blues, starting with a blistering cover of John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson’s classic “Good Morning Schoolgirl.” With a lusty vocal performance accompanied by Guy’s lively fretwork, Wells’ punctuates the lyrics with shards of harp laid atop the jaunty rhythm provided by bassist Jack Myers and drummer Billy Warren. The title track is taken from harp wizard Sonny Boy Williamson, and Wells’ version features an upbeat, rollicking arrangement with plenty of harp gymnastics and great guitar tone from Guy, who manages to coax a sound akin to a riffing organ from his fretboard.

In The Wee Wee Hours

Wells dips into the Amos Blakemore catalog once again for “In the Wee Wee Hours,” one of four gems from the songwriter to be found on Hoodoo Man Blues. Wells firmly places “In the Wee Wee Hours” in the pantheon of classic blues torch-songs with a dynamic performance that colors the entire song in a dark shade of blue. Wells’ emotional harpwork lays the foundation upon which Guy embroiders his beautiful, melancholy guitar lines. Wells’ vocals are sparse, more of a fill in-between the soul-crushing instrumentation, and they work well in context, providing maximum impact. By contrast, Blakemore’s “We’re Ready” is delivered as a mid-tempo instrumental shuffle with a swaggering backbeat, Wells’ fluid harp playing, and Guy’s stinging, sharp-edged guitar. Warren’s drumming really stands out here, propelling the song with flurries of cymbal and skins.

Guitarist Kenny Burrell’s “Chitlins Con Carne” has become a blues and jazz standard, but in 1965 it was a mere instrumental curiosity, the song’s charms amplified here by Wells’ serpentine harp and Guy’s energetic six-string, passages marked by Wells’ pronounced grunts. Hoodoo Man Blues ends as it begins, with Wells’ taking the traditional “Yonder Wall” into the stratosphere with a rocking take that brings the noise and brings the funk with scrappy harp and rhythmic guitarplay rolling high in the mix above a fat rhythmic groove. This 2011 reissue includes several bonus tracks in the form of alternate takes and illuminating studio chatter, but the most significant find here is a performance of Buddy Guy’s “I Ain’t Stranded” that features Wells’ soulful vocals sputtering and sliding across Guy’s Chuck Berry-styled, duckwalking rock ‘n’ blues guitar pickin’.         

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Quite simply, if you’re a blues fan, then you should have a copy of Junior Wells’ Hoodoo Man Blues in your collection. Featuring brilliant performances all around, matched with a classic tracklist and stellar instrumentation, the album would become – and remains – Delmark’s all-time best-seller and is a Grammy® Hall of Fame inductee.

While the bonus tracks included on this 2011 reissue add a little additional spice to the already heady musical gumbo, the addition of new liner note and rare B&W photos from the original 1965 recording session provide plenty of reasons to upgrade your old copy. For the newbie, however, Hoodoo Man Blues is where the legacies of Junior Wells and Buddy Guy were first writ large. Get it! (Delmark Records, released August 23, 2011)

Buy the CD from Amazon: Junior Wells’ Hoodoo Man Blues

Archive Review: Magic Sam's Live At The Avant Garde (2013)

By the mid-1960s, Chicago blues guitarist "Magic" Sam Maghett had been kicking around the Windy City for a decade and a half, trying to kickstart a career that seemed to be buoyed entirely by his dynamic live performances. A series of well-received but under-performing sides released by the Cobra and Chief Records labels between 1957 and 1961 had earned Sam a reputation as a fiery guitarist and soulful vocalist, and while they were influential beyond what their meager sales numbers would indicate, creatively Sam didn't hit his stride until signing with Bob Koester's groundbreaking Delmark Records label.

Magic Sam's Live At the Avant Garde

At the time, Delmark Records was pioneering a new style of blues that not only pushed the staid genre into new territory, but also appealed to a growing audience of young white fans. Records by Junior Wells, J.B. Hutto, and Magic Sam's 1967 debut, West Side Soul, would withstand the test of time to become influential classics of the blues, but in the soul-drenched era, anachronistic guitar men like Maghett had a hard time finding gigs in Chicago. Sam drove north in June 1968 to perform at the Avant Garde in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the show thankfully captured on tape by high school student and blues fan Jim Charne.

The Magic man kicked off the Avant Garde set with a rip-roaring cover of Freddie King's instrumental classic "San-Ho-Zay" that he'd later record later that year for his sophomore effort Black Magic. As drummer Bob Richey delivers a strong circular beat and bassist "Big Mojo" Robert Elem holds down a fat bottom end, Magic Sam embroiders the progressive rhythms with his electrically-charged fretwork. The notes jump out of the speaker and attack your ears with the subtlety of a swarm of angry bees, but you're overjoyed by the musical honey left behind. The slightly less rambunctious "Don't Want No Woman" is built on a standard Chicago shuffle, raised a notch by Sam's underrated, soulful vocals and imaginative guitarplay.

While the original recording has been re-mastered and cleaned up as much as possible by producer and engineer Charne, there's still plenty of dirt and grease in the grooves, and the shortcomings of the original 45-year-old recording technology are evident on several tracks. It's no worse sounding than standing at the back of a smoke-filled club though, the notes bouncing and colliding off the walls and other listeners. Besides, when you're faced with a performance as stunning as Sam's take on Lowell Fulson's "It's All Your Fault Baby," you're not really going to care. His emotional vocals are paired with a languid backbeat and the song's familiar recurring lick, the guitarist delivering a blues tour-de-force. While his instrument trembles and shakes throughout the take, Sam's anguished solo almost three-minutes into the song is the definition of the blues, perfectly capturing the song's heartbreak with a few well-written lines of poetic guitarplay.

Tribute to Muddy Waters

Maghett's original "You Belong To Me" is an upbeat rocker with a jaunty rhythmic soundtrack that relies heavily on Elem's lively bass lines and Sam's machine-gun guitar licks. His vocals pop out of the mix and lyrics are delivered at a frenzied pace as Richey's rapid-fire drumbeats keep moving the clock forwards. It's an exhilarating ride, and highly recommended, but still nowhere near as alluring as Sam's reading of Amos Blakemore's "Come On In This House." Sam's vocals here often ride a rocket into the stratosphere, the singer hitting falsetto notes that seem to amplify his emotional turmoil, his wiry fretwork echoing the tearful vibe, a few well-placed notes delivering tremors the equal of any earthquake.

Magic Sam pays tribute to the great Muddy Waters with a pair of nicely-chosen-and-delivered covers, the first of the Willie Dixon-penned "Hoochie Coochie Man," one of the Chicago blues master's signature songs. With Richey and Elem laying down a martial rhythm, Sam spits out the now-legendary lyrics with a certainty that, while less forceful than Waters, is boastful nonetheless. Sam's guitar licks mimic the original recording, but he slaps some fresh paint on the song with a tense solo that wraps around your ears like barbed-wire and squeezes every bit of braggadocio out of the tale. By contrast, while his cover of Waters' "Still A Fool" retains the Delta dirt of the original, Sam takes it to a while other level, his hypnotizing guitarwork rising above his equally-enchanting vocals to leave the listener gobsmacked by the primal electricity of the performance.

One of Sam's best-known songs, "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)" was actually written by his West Side blues partner Otis Rush, but Maghett takes it and makes it entirely his own with a powerful reading, the song's up-tempo rhythms matched by Sam's exclusive guitar tones and nimble-fingered playing, the blues literally falling from his fingertips and washing over the audience. Sam goes the opposite direction with his original instrumental "Lookin' Good," the guitarist amping up a reckless rockabilly vibe, welding it to a steely blues framework, and subsequently laying down the nastiest, greasiest, most enjoyable finger-pickin' east of the mighty Mississippi before the song just choogles on down the tracks as its infectious locomotive rhythm fades into the background. 

The Reverend's Bottom Line

As mentioned above, the sound quality of Live At the Avant Garde is a bit dicey, scratchy with a bit of echo and some fuzziness. What a young Jim Charne accomplished with his original tape is amazing nonetheless, his primitive recording technology managing to capture the raw immediacy and electricity of the performance. And it's the music that matters, Magic Sam and his trio reveling in the blues, cranking out a high-energy, hour-plus set that is both intimate and expansive, the guitarist bringing his best to a meager audience in a small club. Live At the Avant Garde perfectly documents the musical growth between Sam's West Side Soul and Black Magic albums, and is a welcome addition to the blues legend's too-small catalog. Highly recommended! (Delmark Records, released November 19, 2013)

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Magic Sam's Live At the Avant Garde