Although born in Kentucky, John Wright was, at the height of his career in the late 1950s and early 60s, associated with Chicago, where he’d moved with his parents as a child. Honing his playing and writing skills on the local scene (and during a stint in the US Army), he made a quintet of albums as leader for the Prestige label. Wright’s debut,South Side Soul, recorded (superbly) by Rudy Van Gelder and re-released here as an all-analogue, Kevin Gray-cut vinyl LP, made a huge impact and established Wright as the Windy City’s foremost purveyor of soulful, hard-edged jazz.

In the 64 years since it was recorded,SSS hasn’t aged one jot, with its seven hard-grooving 12-bar blues-based tunes proving irresistable. The album as a whole has a real sense of place (if someone asked you what Chicago jazz sounded like, you’d play them SSS): Wright understood Chi-Town and its musical traditions, and his use of two of the city’s most established musical natives, bassist Wendell Roberts and drummer Walter McCants as accompanists; along with evocative, Chicago-specific titles such as ‘63rd and Cottage Grove’ or ‘45th and Calumet’ only add to the feeling that Chicago was indeed ‘sweet home’.

As a debut recording, SSS certainly packs a punch and has an admirable swagger that makes it a compelling statement of intent. Wright’s other Prestige albums continued this rich vein of form but after the mid-1960s, he didn’t record again until 1994. An underrated talent who deserves to be heard again and again.