The Jody Noa Memorial Page

   

In Honor Of The Holidays, Popular Demand and Jody's Memory We'll Be Carrying This Through New Years 2010!  Also if anyone knows where his family members are tell them to come over here and hit our email button. We'd like to talk to them!

Welcome to the Jody Noa Memorial Page in Bittersweet Records Co. which is created with the cooperation of the producers for Jody's Music - Sopro Inc. , and the singular , as well as, long standing vision of Producers and Promoters - Buddy Monaco and Red Rose of Sopro Music, Inc.

 

On December 15th 2004 the legendary Southside Chicago Bluesman Jody Noa left this world, but he left it a richer place than when he arrived.  There is no accurate estimation as to how many people saw Jody perform, yet he is one of the senior and longest standing acts that the modern history of the Chicago Blues Scene has yet to spawn.  There will be many that may try to climb the summit that Jody built.  It will be some time before anyone will reach it.

 

There have been many masters of the harp that need not be mentioned here, Blues Fans know who they are but what any astute listener to these recordings will instantly recognize is that Jody's Harp playing was a fever born way inside his soul and something he was compelled to be along with being a brilliant frontman.  Think about this; how many players have had a bar opened in their name just so they could stand on stage and blow their heart out?  You're right, none that you can readily recall, other than Buddy Guy and BB King.  But of the oh so many people who saw this man perform, that's where they went to see this man play, as well as, all over the United States where a Blues Harp Player was welcome.  So...in Pell Lake, Wisconsin there came into being Jody's Blue Room where the legend of this kind of performer, has its credibility born.  And that's a pretty remarkable fact!  Dan Akroyd and John Belushi could only hope to be, what Jody Noa was...a real Blues Brother!  Though we also know that Jody was not the kind of person that would ever slight them.  He just loved to play!

 

Jody Noa's playing was lyrical as it was strong.  He had a red velvet like case with every conceivable harmonica inside and wielded it like an arsenal of horns.  You can hear the "Horn Player" mentality in everything he sings into the reeds.  Did Jody "HAVE" the Blues?  Well...if you can't hear the dues and the grit in what he did, then check your pulse because you must be dead!

 

These live recordings are the last remaining breaths that Jody left behind for all of us to return to, and what all of us are reminded of as we listen, is that life is not as long as we would all wish it to be, so if you're going to live it, might as well take it all the way to the top and that's what Jody Noa did with the Sho-Nuff Blues Band.

For darn near forty years the protégé of Chicago Blues Legend Junior Wells blew his harp playing into the hearts of more people than you can imagine and some of which included the likes of Willie Nelson, Sam Kinison, Ginger Baker, Levon Helms (from The Band) The Turtles, and the legendary James Cotton.

 

Many years from now, in a day when CD's will have long gone the way of the 78 & 45 RPM's, 33-1/3 LP's, 8 Track Tapes, Cassettes and MP3's...there will be these wonderful relics left by Jody for some young Blues inspired player to find and listen to.  And of course you know people...The Blues will never die!  Just as in the days of great classical masters going forward to the here and now, someone will have the good sense to listen to every note this man played on all of the recordings we're going to be releasing here at Bittersweet...of this man...and what Sopro Music had the "vision" to preserve for posterity.

 

They'll have Red Rose and Buddy Monaco of Sopro to thank for that!  Most of all they'll have the life of Jody Noa, his teacher Junior Wells, and the Sho-Nuff Blues band to remember and cherish, as all who knew Jody...Did!

 

Lou Lewis & Brian Sidler- Bittersweet Records Co.