This two CD overview of both Hound Dog Taylor and his sidekick Brewer Phillips features some of the toughest Chicago Blues ever recorded. The legendary JSP Brewer Phillips studio album is included in its entirety. Early small label sides by Hound Dog Taylor are collected together for the first time and this set features the very first CD release of the Live At Florences recordings.
Time traveler Alvin Youngblood Hart's albums have darted from crusty Delta fingerpicking and hollering to Hendrixian hellfire to crunchy, primal rockin' blues, all with the ring of authority that comes from complete commitment to the music. This time, he's set the wayback machine to the early '30s, using guitars, mandolin, banjo, and a lot of heart to interpret tunes by Son House, Charley Patton, Skip James, Leadbelly, and others. Somehow, the dust of old Mississippi, the state where the Oakland-born musician now resides, seems to have gotten into his blood. Hart sounds like Parchman Farm's newest inmate as he wails and moans through "How Long Before I Can Change My Clothes," plucking notes from a National resonator guitar. Chiming out chords and quick runs on banjo, he makes Odetta's "Chilly Winds" seem like they're carrying the voices of lost ghosts, recounting their lives of misery under Jim Crow's wing. Hart tends to take many of these classics, like Patton's "Tom Rushen Blues" and Leadbelly's "Alberta," at slightly slower tempos, which gives him more time to squeeze gut emotions from his lightly graveled phrases and lets his pluck-and-drone playing work its hypnotic effect. Stark and impressive for the power Hart generates alone, this may be the acoustic blues album of the year.
Now on his 14th release for approximately ten different labels, Texan Omar Dykes keeps the faith by re-recording some of his better tracks, and adding a few new covers. While it looks on paper to be treading water, this is really one of the band's strongest releases, since the material - which has often been inconsistent - is top-notch, and the new Howlers are a crack unit with impeccable chops. Omar attacks and rearranges these songs with the experience of having played them for years, in many cases making these versions more definitive than the originals, an unusual occurrence when an artist revisits his own work…
Led by musical director Scotty Barnhart, the Count Basie Orchestra keeps Basie’s unmistakable style alive and thriving around the world.In the great traction of the Basie Swings albums comes this explosive album of collaborations with some of the greatest living blues and jazz artists, Basie Swings The Blues. In preparation for these sessions, Barnhart took a pilgrimage to the Mississippi Delta to immerse himself in the land where blues began. The resulting album is joyful mix of downhome blues with the deep swing and sophistication that only The Count Basie Orchestra can provide.
During the last quarter of the 20th century, and thanks largely to Eric Clapton's remarkable devotion to his memory, Robert Leroy Johnson posthumously became the most celebrated Delta blues musician of the pre-WWII era. Among numerous editions of his complete works and various anthologies that combine his recordings with those of his contemporaries and followers, J.S.P.'s The Road to Robert Johnson and Beyond combines many of his essential performances with those by dozens of other blues artists from Blind Lemon Jefferson and Henry Thomas to Muddy Waters and Elmore James. 105 tracks fill four CDs with several decades' worth of strongly steeped blues that trace the African American migration from the deep south on up into Chicago. This is a fine way to savor the recorded evidence, as primary examples from Blind Blake, Charley Patton, Son House, Charlie McCoy, Walter Vincson, Skip James, Ma Rainey, Tampa Red, Kokomo Arnold, Scrapper Blackwell, Leroy Carr, Lonnie Johnson, and Peetie Wheatstraw lead directly to early modern masters like Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy, Johnny Temple, Leroy Foster, Johnny Shines, Homesick James Williamson, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Snooky Pryor, Little Walter, and David Honeyboy Edwards, among many others.
2007 GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING BEST TRADITIONAL BLUES ALBUM OF THE YEAR HISTORY IN THE MAKING Once in a lifetime you may experience a brief moment when the stars align and something truly extraordinary happens. This was the case in October 2004, when four of the greatest living blues legends were assembled in Dallas, Texas for one incomparable night of music. At the time they ranged in age from 89 to 94 and all had received the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship Award, the highest honor in the USA for traditional arts. These musicians have devoted their entire life to playing the blues, and staging such an epic event was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Once reunited, the old magic reemerged. It was if they were long lost school buddies.