Country Blues

This 20-song single CD reissues Furry Lewis' first modern commercial recordings, done for two Prestige/Bluesville albums (Back on My Feet Again, Done Changed My Mind) in April and May of 1961 at Sun Studios in Memphis. Lewis is in brilliant form throughout, his fingers nearly as fast and...

For most listeners, Blind Boy Fuller's Truckin' My Blues Away (on Yazoo) may be a better bet than Columbia/Legacy's East Coast Piedmont Style, since it actually has a higher concentration of strong material, capturing the influential bluesman at his peak. All of the 14 tracks were...

An essential Tommy Johnson collection, Document's Complete Recorded Works (1928-1929) features 17 songs from the Delta blues pioneer, including two alternative takes and a pair of previously unissued songs known respectively as "Morning Prayer Blues" and "Boogaloosa...

These recordings, dating between 1927 and 1929, are a unique body of work: work songs, minstrel numbers, rags, and what we now define as the blues, all offered in an unpretentious form that would have been every bit as compelling had Henry Thomas cut them this way 40 years later. Songs such as...

This release supplants both the Yazoo In His Prime and the Wolf Records 1990 Complete Works collections released earlier. This time everything that Lewis recorded for Victor and Vocalion during those extraordinary two years of work during the 1920's has been gathered together, including...

I Ain't Gonna Be Worried No More compiles 23 songs Sleepy John Estes recorded between 1929 and 1941, capturing the bluesman at the height of his creative powers. Unlike many Delta bluesmen of his era, Estes worked with a full jug band, which gave his music a greater variety of textures. His...

Arhoolie's Texas Sharecropper & Songster is a recording made in 1960, during the blues revival. Prior to the blues revival, Mance Lipscomb was an unknown, and his discovery was one of the positive byproducts of the revival. He was a great country-blues man, and this is perhaps his...

While there has suddenly been a flood of CDs featuring masterful New Orleans keyboard wizard and vocalist James Booker, his best release arguably remains Classified. The 12-track set was a landmark album, as Booker displayed every facet of his distinctive style. He did up-tempo lues,...

One of the high points of Helen Humes' career, this Contemporary set (reissued on CD) features superior songs, superb backup, and very suitable and swinging arrangements by Marty Paich. Humes' versions of "If I Could Be With You,"

If you've never heard Blind Willie Johnson, you are in for one of the great, bone-chilling treats in music. Johnson played slide guitar and sang in a rasping, false bass that could freeze the blood. But no bluesman was he; this was gospel music of the highest order, full of emotion and...

This 20-song compilation of Frank Stokes' late-'20s recordings for the Victor label is a more expansive version of the Stokes collection available on Yazoo Records, with very little overlap between the two. The sound is variable, as is usually the case with Document's releases,...

Victoria Spivey, who made her initial reputation with dark and somewhat scary blues lyrics, altered her style during the period covered by this second of four "complete" Document CDs. She is heard in a series of double entendre songs (usually issued in two parts) with singer/guitarist...

Columbia/Legacy's 2000 collection The Best of Taj Mahal is a first-rate overview of Taj Mahal's classic late-'60s/early-'70s work for Columbia. Spanning 17 tracks, including a previously unreleased cut "Sweet Mama Janisse" from 1970, this hits many of the key points...

JSP, one of the U.K.'s most active historical reissue labels, presents an outstanding postwar Chicago blues anthology packed with essential recordings made between 1947 and 1955 by Sunnyland Slim & His Pals. Out of the 104 tracks (not 97 as stated on the front of the packaging), 60 are...

If you're going to sweat a Big Bill Broonzy collection down to only one disc, this is the one to keep in the collection. It's really his most representative work, highlighting most of the best-known numbers from his extensive repertoire and the highlights (including a hilarious...

This a marvelous little companion piece to Young Big Bill Broonzy (1928-35) on Yazoo. Broonzy's agtime guitar picking is textbook in its scope, and his vocals are as warm as can be. Dubbed from old 78s, the ultra high quality of the music on Do That Guitar Rag (1928-1935) make any...

Bull City Red, who played with the Reverend Gary Davis at various times, turns up on vocals for "I Saw the Light," but the rest of 1935-1949 is all Davis' show. Given the quality of what is here; the quality and inventiveness of the playing alone is astonishing, a youthful version...

Rhino's double-disc 1991 set The Ultimate Collection (1948-1990) falls just short of the promise of its title, losing its focus toward the end of the set. That said, it comes close enough to satisfy, particularly because John Lee Hooker had such a long, convoluted discography, recording for...

B.B. King is not only a timeless singer and guitarist, he's also a natural-born entertainer, and on Live at the Regal the listener is treated to an exhibition of all three of his talents. Over percolating horn hits and rolling shuffles, King treats an enthusiastic audience (at some points,...