Blues Harp

While not the first male or female jazz harp player (Casper Reardon of Jack Teagarden's bands, Adele Girard performing with her husband Joe Marsala, or Corky Hale set precedents), Dorothy Ashby was the very best and most swinging performer on the multi-stringed instrument associated with the gates of heaven. Here on Earth, Ashby adeptly plucked and strummed the harp like nobody else, as evidenced on a single reissue containing her two best LPs for the Prestige and Prestige/New Jazz labels from 1958 - Hip Harp and In a Minor Groove. Alongside her prior efforts for the Savoy label, they collectively represent a small but substantive discography for the Detroit native in small group settings. With the exceptional flute sounds produced by Frank Wess, the combo plays music that is oriented via a unique sonic palate, further enhanced by the principals in the standards and originals they have chosen…

Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (1975)
Genre: Blues | MP3 320 kbit/s | 100 MB
Time 40:20 min | Label: Chess | Release Date: 1995

"When The Band's drummer Levon Helm set up a Woodstock-based recording studio and production company in 1975, his first client was the legendary bluesman Muddy Waters. Surrounding him with familiar sidemen Pinetop Perkins and Bob Margolin, plus such simpatico rock and blues stalwarts as The Band's Garth Hudson on accordion and organ, Paul Butterfield on harp, and Howard Johnson on saxophone, the 60-year-old Waters responded with the smoothest and most supple singing of his career. These two sessions are as delightful as any in his long association with Chess Records, and they signify his last album with that label. Among this Grammy Award-winning work's highlights are Muddy's original composition "Born with Nothing," featuring his stinging signature slide; his joyful R&B covers of "Let the Good Times Roll," Wilbert Harrison's "Kansas City," and Louis Jordan's "Caledonia," this last graced by a looping Hudson accordion solo; and the previously unreleased bonus track, "Fox Squirrel"."
- Alan Greenberg Amazon.com

Slim Harpo - Buzzin' The Blues: The Complete Slim Harpo (2015) {5CD Box Set, Bear Family BCD 17339 EK}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.56 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 935 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 41 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2015 Bear Family | BCD 17339 EK
Blues / Electric Blues / Harmonica Blues / Swamp Blues

Back when the Rolling Stones were proud to be the voice of revolt and Mick Jagger was as far away from his knighthood as Zayn Malik is from a seat in the House of Lords, they were, very occasionally, modest, not to say humble. A couple years after cutting their eponymous first album in 1964, chock full of covers of blues and rhythm and blues songs by black artists including a buzz-toned slice of anthropomorphism about our favourite honey-making insect, Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine: “You could say that we did blues to turn people on, but why they would be turned on by us is unbelievably stupid. I mean what's the point in listening to us doing ‘I’m a King Bee’ when you can hear Slim Harpo do it?”

Rice Miller (or Alec or Aleck Miller – everything about this blues great is somewhat of a mystery) probably didn't need to take the name of the original Sonny Boy Williamson (John Lee Williamson) to get noticed, since in many ways he was the better musician, but Miller seemed to revel in confusion, at least when it came to biographical facts, so for whatever reason, blues history has two Sonny Boy Williamsons. Like the first Williamson, Miller was a harmonica player, but he really sounded nothing like his adopted namesake, favoring a light, soaring, almost horn-like sound on the instrument…