Little Walter Confessin' The Blues

The Jazz Club series is an attractive addition to the Verve catalogue. With it's modern design and popular choice of repertoire, the Jazz Club is not only opened for Jazz fans, but for everyone that loves good music.

The Rolling Stones have always been the biggest champions of the blues, even taking their name from the Muddy Waters’ track ‘Rollin’ Stone’ – so who better to have hand-picked a special compilation album of the music that has inspired them throughout their career. Confessin’ The Blues collects together the greatest ever bluesmen, such as Chuck Berry, B.B King, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James and Muddy Waters and provides a perfect education to the genre. The tracklisting on the various formats has been chosen by The Rolling Stones, in collaboration with BMG & Universal and will be released on November 9th 2018.

As MCA reconfigures their Chess catalog, this 20-track single-disc compilation now takes the place of their original 12-track Best of Little Walter collection, a landmark blues album which had remained in print for over three decades. His Best (Chess 50th Anniversary Collection) reprises ten of those seminal tracks (leaving off the echoey "Blue Light" and "You Better Watch Yourself," the latter being available on the two-disc anthology The Essential Little Walter) and brings ten others cherry-picked from the catalog to the mix. If you've never experienced the innovative instrumental genius of Little Walter, classics like "Juke," "Off the Wall," "Mean Old World," "Sad Hours," "Blues with a Feeling," "My Babe," "Boom Out Goes the Light," "Last Night," "Mellow Down Easy" and "Roller Coaster" (written by Bo Diddley, who also guests on guitar) will come as a major revelation.

The fact that a comprehensive collection like this one can exist well into the twenty-first century gives testament to both the staying power of the blues and to the wide influence it has had on other areas of popular music. Whilst few of these have ever been major worldwide hits in the conventional sense, so many of them have provided the roots to rock music that is enjoyed by millions today. This is, we hope, a collection that makes you seek out more, and our Not Now catalogue can offer you very many fine albums to take you further.

"Almighty Dollar" heralds Rod Piazza's latest achievement in a career that spans well over four decades and twenty-five recordings. This time out, the Mighty Flyers rocket into the stratosphere as Piazza pilots his crew through another harp-fueled voyage propelled by some very special guests including Bay Area guitarist Rusty Zinn, Mississippi-bred bluesman Johnny Dyer, So Cal bassists Hank Van Sickle on upright and Norm Gonzalez on electric bass, along with saxophonist Jonny Viau from San Diego. In these tough economic times the power of the almighty dollar may not be what it used to be… but in the hands of Rod Piazza and the All Mighty Flyers you can rest assured that their music retains a value that is unequivocally built to last.

The elusive Chicago harpist's one and only full-length album, originally issued on Steve Wisner's short-lived Mr. Blues logo and later picked up by Rooster Blues (but not available on CD as yet). Cut in 1975, this set shows that Charles never left the 1950s stylistically – backed by a nails-tough combo, he pays tribute to both Sonny Boys and his ex-boss Jimmy Rogers while betraying more than a hint of Little Walter influence.