Mike Wheeler - Chicago Blues (Vinyl)

Vinyl LP

Mike Wheeler has been making records for Delmark since 2012, and this is the first of them to be cut to vinyl. It is a compilation rather than a new session: five tracks come from Turn Up!! (2016), two from Self Made Man (2012), and one had existed only as a download.

That one is "Serves Me Right To Suffer," the John Lee Hooker song, taken live at SPACE in Evanston on September 20, 2023 during Delmark's seventieth-anniversary celebration. Wheeler sings and plays it alongside the Delmark All-Star Band - Dave Specter on second guitar, Roosevelt Purifoy on keyboards, Larry Williams on bass and Cleo Cole on drums - and the label issued it as a single in January 2024, dedicated to the memory of Jimmy Johnson. The studio sides carry the working group Wheeler put together in 2001, Williams on bass and Cole on drums with Brian James on keyboards, joined here by Omar Coleman on harmonica, Kenny Anderson on trumpet and Hank Ford on tenor saxophone. "That's What Love Will Make You Do" is a Little Milton song.

Wheeler was born in Chicago in 1961 and played his first gig in 1984 next to Lovie Lee, Muddy Waters' pianist. Before he led a band of his own he worked with Big James and the Chicago Playboys, Nellie "Tiger" Travis and Peaches Staten, and shared bandstands with Koko Taylor, Buddy Guy, Son Seals, Willie Kent and Jimmy Johnson. The Chicago Blues Hall of Fame inducted him as a Master Blues Artist in 2014. The jacket credits the record to the Mike Wheeler Band and carries Delmark catalog number 896.

Tracklist

1. Turn Up!!
2. Here I Am
3. Yeah!
4. Chicago Blues
5. Brand New Cadillac
6. A Blind Man Can See
7. Serves Me Right To Suffer
8. That's What Love Will Make You Do