Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,994
By This is the grave of Otis Spann.
We don’t actually know when Spann was born. The grave says in 1930 and some agree. Others say he was born in 1924. Probably it is the latter, based on the work of researchers wrote a biography that claimed he was born in that year in Belzoni, Mississippi. It’s hard to know for sure, but it’s probably the 1924 date. His father might have been a pianist who went by the name of Friday Ford, but we know his mother Josephine Erby was a guitar player who had worked with Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith. She later married a preacher named Frank Spann and the boy took his name. While there is a kind of general belief that the rural Black South was divided into people who were religious folks and then people who played the blues and the former saw the latter as playing the devil’s music, in fact there was tons of crossover and Frank Spann was one of those people who did both. In any case, Otis started playing the piano from an early date.
By the 1940s, Spann was playing in Jackson and then in 1946, he followed the Great Migration north to Chicago. He soon became a fixture in the blues scene there, at first a minor figure who could get gigs, but over time, as he developed his style further, he stared becoming a bigger name on his own and playing with bigger stars. His real big break came in 1952, when Muddy Waters hired him for his band. This was the classic Waters era and so if you get some Greatest Hits package of Waters’ work, it’s Spann on almost all the cuts, including “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “I’m Ready.” Spann would play with Muddy until 1968, but he also recorded a lot on his own and played frequently in other bands too, including with Bo Diddley and Howlin’ Wolf.
Spann recorded a single for Chess Records under his own name, but mostly Chess did not see him as a solo artist. It limited him to sideman, which did mean a lot of work, but it did not mean a lot of fame. He might have played on some of the early Chuck Berry tracks as well, though this is unclear as a lot of that kind of information was not recorded at the time. As the English blues revival began, Spann was one of those guys who people such as Eric Clapton wanted to see and be. This reignited a career that was OK, but had limited appeal outside of Chicago. The folk revival had picked him up some. He performed at Newport Jazz in 1960 and would start touring European festivals later in the 60s. He had some acclaimed albums in these years too. His first full length album was in 1960, with Otis Spann is the Blues. That includes 1965’s Otis Spann’s Chicago Blues, which is half solo piano and half with a band, so it mixes things up a bit, which can be nice with blues albums that I often find to be kind of samey. He sometimes split vocal duties on his own albums as well. For example, he recorded another 1965 album called The Blues Never Die!, for Prestige, where he sang about half the songs and James Cotton sang on the rest.
Spann died of liver cancer in 1970. He was probably 46, not 40. I assume heavy drinking had a lot to do with it.
Let’s listen to some Otis Spann.
Otis Spann is buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, Alsip, Illinois. However, the marker is not from 1970. It was unmarked for years. It was not until the late 90s that some blues revivalist guys raised some money to put one up. Spann was the first pianist elected to the Blues Hall of Fame, in 1980, which is the inaugural class.
If you would like this series to visit other members of the Blues Hall of Fame, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. John Lee Hooker is in Oakland and Lightnin Hopkins is in Houston. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.