John Wright was born in Louisville, KY., but musically he was a child of Chicago s fertile South Side jazz scene, were his family moved when he was a kid. He played soul piano, not because it was fashionable, but because it was part of his DNA. Without much formal training, he naturally turned to the kind of music he was familiar with when he began to play himself, and that natural quality made South Side Soul his first album, devoted entirely to 12-bar blues a triumph for him, an uncommon musician who could create and sustain moods with the simplest of material. On Nice N Tasty and  The Last Amen, also included here, he considerably expanded his own soul vein repertoire with some standards, while on Makin Out tenor saxophonist Eddie Cat-Eye Williams is added to the basic trio format on for a direct, uncluttered, propulsively swinging session. If the influence of Red Garland and Erroll Garner is detectable on his piano, John Wright remains emphatically his own man throughout these persuasively soulful and engaging albums.