MIGHTY JOE YOUNG LUCILLE SPANN

I, for one, have maintained stoutly in the past few years that Mighty Joe Young is one of the Midwest’s most gifted and conclusive guitarists, and certainly Chicago’s best. I realize this is a monumental claim for anyone to make, but as a fellow musician and a decided fan of his for fourteen years, I have had the pleasurable experience of watching what was a very much advanced embryo develop and grow to be a master among his strongest contemporaries.

Joe Young was born September 23, 1927 in a remote part of the state of Louisiana, but he was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and claims that city as his home today, I met Joe in November of 1956, when he was playing lead guitar for Joe Little and his Heart Breakers, and he played with this band for about a year all over the West Side. He then left the Heart Breakers and started playing with Billy Boy -Arnold’s Band on 63rd Street at the Columbian Club. Billy Boy’s Bahd with the addition of Joe Young was one of the hottest groups on the South Side at this time.