Junior Watson

Despite using the function of perennial sideman, frequently in fine rings that left very much to be preferred within the visibility section, Mike “Junior” Watson was, and it is, perhaps one of the most important blues guitarists of his generation. Actually, pursuing Robben Ford’s defection into fusion, Watson was rivaled just by Hollywood Fatty acids as king from the hill in California, and by Jimmie Vaughan somewhere else. While he and Vaughan possess radically different strategies, Watson’s arch-top-cheapo-through-reverb-tank audio has much in keeping with Hollywood Fatty acids’, as will his capability to toe nail apparently every traditional electrical blues design. But whereas Fatty acids was a professional of mimicry, Watson acquired a spontaneous, unique bent laced along with his oddball love of life. After getting started with harpist Gary Smith in north California in the first ’70s, he teamed with Pole Piazza’s Mighty Flyers (née Soaring Sauce Music group) for 11 years, where he was instrumental in injecting the Chicago-styled blues music group (and countless others in its wake) with ample dosages of golf swing, culling licks from guitarists Expenses Jennings, Tiny Grimes, and Billy Butler. On the way he gigged with Charlie Musselwhite, Jimmy Rogers, Luther Tucker, among others, ultimately becoming a member of the ’80s release of Canned Temperature, with whom he continuing to tour before late ’90s.