In 1987, 18-month-old Jessica McClure fell down a narrow well in Midland, Texas, and was trapped for three days before being rescued. Among the millions worldwide transfixed by the ordeal was Charlie Musselwhite, the blues-harmonica virtuoso.

The event's life-altering impact on Musselwhite inspired a song that is the title track for his latest, heavily autobiographical album, "The Well" (Alligator), among the best releases in a career that stretches back to the explosive Chicago blues scene of the '60s.

Musselwhite had been drinking excessively since he came to Chicago in 1962 looking for work after growing up in the South. By '87, he was downing as much as two quarts of alcohol a day.

 
"In the beginning drinking was fun, but as I got older, that glow I used to get never came," he says. "But If I quit drinking, I'd get sick. I'd drink to be normal. I had a glimmer of sanity in that haze of alcohol and realized I had to get off. But I didn't know how. I felt trapped."

He slowly tried to cut down, and then was pushed to the finish line by  "Baby Jessica."

"She was trapped in there with a broken arm in the dark, in a life-and-death situation she was singing nursery rhymes to herself and being brave," he says. "It made my problems seem tiny. So as a prayer to her and myself, I decided I wasn't going to drink till she got out of that well. It was like I was tricking myself, telling myself that I wasn't going to quit for good, just until she got out. It took three days to get her out, and I haven't had a drink since. Made me wonder, 'Wow, what was that all about?' Thinking about quitting proved harder to me than actually quitting."

That decision revived Musselwhite's career 23 years ago. He's now on top form, and "The Well" marks the first time in his career that he's written every song on one of his albums. Most are deeply personal, tales of nights in jail and dealing with his mother's death. On "Dig the Pain," he builds a song on a mantra he used to repeat to himself when he was in the depths of dependency.

"Suffering was an everyday fact of life," he says. "The best way for me to handle it was to say I was digging it. That took the edge off it: 'Get into it, make friends with it.' It helped me cope, even if it didn't take it away."

Musselwhite's only solace came when he'd perform.
      
"Especially for me blues is healing in itself," he says. "I always felt blues was more than just music, but an attitude, like the other side of the coin from gospel. It's your comforter when you're down, your buddy when you're up. The spirit of the music is, 'We can get through this.' If I couldn't play, I don't know what I would've done."
      
The new album also looks back on his childhood in Mississippi and Memphis and his formative experiences as a blues harmonica player in Chicago after he arrived on the South Side looking for work at age 18. He was already a blues fan, and thought he'd gone to heaven when he discovered that giants such as Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Elmore James were playing in his South Side neighborhood almost every night. As a white guy he stood out in rowdy joints like Pepper's Lounge.
      
"Guys would later say to me, 'At first we thought you were a cop or crazy,' " Musselwhite says with a laugh. "They were rough places, but I never had any problems. When people found out I was from the South, that made it cool. I was living just around the corner from Junior Wells and we'd pass each other going to the liquor store."

At first Musselwhite had no intent of playing professionally, even though he'd been playing harp since he was a child. But one night a waitress whispered in Waters' ear that the kid at the bar could play, and the blues legend invited Musselwhite on stage. After that, the young harp player started getting calls from other musicians to sit in, and developed into a formidable talent. His 1967 debut album on Vanguard, "Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite's South Side Band," helped define the cutting edge in contemporary blues, with Musselwhite putting a Chicago accent on his rural Southern harmonica chops.
             
"I was having a lot of fun in Chicago, but there wasn't much money in it," he says. "There was so much competition and I had to work a factory job to keep paying the bills. But after the first album came out, I got a call for a month's worth of work in the San Francisco area for good money. They were playing me on underground radio out there, and I got gigs all up and down the West Coast, playing in ballrooms like the Fillmore and the Avalon instead of clubs. Out there, the blues was exotic, and the hippies were hungry for it. I took a leave from my job and never looked back."

    greg@gregkot.com

Charlie Musselwhite: 9:30 p.m. Saturday at Buddy Guy's Legends, 700 S. Wabash, $20; etix.com.