South Side Soul [LP]

John Wright was born in Louisville, KY, but musically he was a child of the fertile jazz scene of Chicago's South Side, where his family moved when he was a child. He played soul piano, not because it was fashionable, but because it was part of his DNA.

Without much formal training, he naturally turned to the kind of music he was familiar with when he started playing himself, and this natural quality made South Side Soul, his first album devoted exclusively to 12-bar blues, a triumph for him, an unusual musician who could create and sustain moods with the simplest of material.