The title is a bit of a ringer, since this isn't a collaborative effort in any way, shape, or form. Muddy & the Wolf contains a half-dozen live Muddy Waters tracks with backing from Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and Otis Spann, the material culled from the Fathers & Sons sessions. The set also features tracks by Howlin' Wolf from his London sessions with Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr. File under "just OK."
After the Rain dates from the most controversial period in Muddy Waters' history – along with its predecessors, Electric Mud (probably the most critically despised album in Muddy's catalog) and Brass and the Blues (an effort to turn him into B.B. King), it came out of an era in which Chess Records was desperately thrashing around trying any musical gambit to boost the sales of its top blues stars. But unlike Electric Mud, in which the repertoire selected by producer Marshall Chess was mostly unsuited, and the musical settings provided by Phil Upchurch, Pete Cosey et al. were too loud and too frenetic for Muddy's style of singing, After the Rain simply let him be Muddy Waters.
Big Walter Horton was one of the key architects of modern blues harmonica. Blues legend Willie Dixon referred to him as "the best harmonica player I ever heard." Along with Little Walter Jacobs and Sonny Boy Williamson II, he is considered to be one of the most influential harpists ever. He was capable of both intense power and fragile delicacy, often in the same song. He was endlessly melodically adventurous, and always unpredictable. His only Alligator Records album, - "Big Walter Horton With Carey Bell", came out in 1972. It paired him with his young protégé, who had played under Walter's tutelage since Bell's arrival in Chicago. Walter's long-time partner Eddie Taylor joined them on guitar. It was Alligator's second-ever release, and received widespread critical acclaim, especially for the fiery harp duets that pitted the two harmonica masters against one another.
The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions was not a high point in the careers of either Howlin' Wolf or the guest superstars Eric Clapton, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Stevie Winwood, and Ringo Starr, though it's not as bad as some blues purists make it out to be. Still, one has to wonder whether a deluxe edition two-CD set, padding out the original with an entire disc of previously unreleased alternate takes/alternate mixes (and three tracks from the same sessions that eventually showed up on the 1974 compilation London Revisited, which also included material by Muddy Waters), was really justified. The material existed, however, and fewer and fewer leftovers from the Chess catalog were available at the beginning of the 21st century.
Even with a career cut short by illness and a premature death, guitarist, singer, and songwriter Rory Gallagher left his mark in the blues and rock worlds. His hard-charging, intensely rhythmic playing style on his 1961 Stratocaster still casts a long shadow over rock & roll: Queen's Brian May imitated not only his playing but his gear early on; he credits Gallagher with the root of his sound. Eric Clapton said it was Gallagher who got him "back into the blues." Johnny Marr acknowledges a great debt as well: After learning how to play the guitarist's classic Deuce album track-for-track at 13, he revealed Gallagher's influence throughout his career.
The Original Album Classics series, courtesy of Sony/BMG, packages together five classic albums from one of the most popular artists on the label's roster, housing them in an attractive slipcase. This set from the Irish guitar legend features the albums Deuce (1971), Calling Card (1976), Top Priority (1979), Jinx (1982) and Fresh Evidence (1988). 56 tracks. For a career that was cut short by illness and a premature death, guitarist, singer, and songwriter Rory Gallagher sure accomplished a lot in the blues music world. Although Gallagher didn't tour the U.S. nearly enough, spending most of his time in Europe, he was known for his no-holds-barred, marathon live shows at clubs and theaters around the United States.
Albert Lee occupies an odd niche in music – British by birth and upbringing, he spent the mid-'60s as a top R&B guitarist, but in the 1970s became one of the top rockabilly guitarists in the world, and no slouch in country music either. In England he's a been household name, and in Nashville and Los Angeles he's been one of the most in-demand session guitarists there is; but outside of professional music circles in America, he's one of those vaguely recognizable names, and occasionally misidentified with his similar-sounding contemporary, ex-Ten Years After guitarist Alvin Lee (with whom he did share a berth once, in Jerry Lee Lewis's band on the latter's London Sessions album) – but where Alvin was a hero of Woodstock and a flashy guitarist, in the manner of British blues extroverts Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, Albert is much more likely to be found playing in the background, behind the Everly Brothers or alongside Eric Clapton.
In January of 1969, British power blues quintet Fleetwood Mac came to Chess Records studios to jam with the likes of Willie Dixon, S.P. Leary, Honeyboy Edwards, and longtime Muddy Waters' pianist Otis Spann. The sessions were so rich and fruitful that three-fifths of the Mac (specifically bassist John McVie and guitarists Peter Green and Danny Kirwin) impressed Spann enough to cut a record with them at the same sessions. While the classic "Country Girl" and a seven-minute "Someday Soon Baby" (which features a lengthy intro from Green on which Spann can be heard barely off mic telling the rest of the band to "let him play on") ended up on the Mac's Blues Jam at Chess double set: remaining cuts included "Dig You" and "Walkin'" and are a near perfect match of Spann's exciting, emotive singing and the Mac's youthful muscle…
The late Irish blues rocker Rory Gallagher would have been pleased to see the Chess logo embossed on the three-disc Blues, a box of rare, unissued, acoustic, and live recordings. Issued to mark what would have been his half-century as a recording artist, 90-percent of the material here is previously unreleased. The discs are divided thematically: Electric, Acoustic, and Live. The booklet is wonderfully annotated with an authoritative essay from journalist and music historian Jas Obrecht; it places Gallagher in his rightful historical place as an electric blues rock pioneer alongside admirers Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix, and Peter Green.