Artist Of The Week: Junior Wells

The artist of the week is the great Junior Wells. Wells was a tremendous harp player that got his start sitting in with Muddy Waters. Wells, and Buddy Guy played together a lot over the years, and were known as the original blues brothers. When I lived in Kansas City and played with John Paul and the Hellhounds, we opened for Wells at the Grand Emporium. Between our show and his I went backstage with John and we met Junior Wells. What amazed me is how nice Junior was to us, and although he had only met John Paul a few times over the years he treated him like his best friend. It was also cool to watch him drink his vodka like water! Yikes! The man had a tremendous tolerance for alcohol, because he polished off the bottle got a new one and went on stage and blew away the crowd.