The Great Wall (2016)

If the Summer of 1967 was the Summer of Love, the Summer of 1966 set the stage for the musical revolution that was to come. Albums released during the season, like The Beatles’ Revolver and The Byrds’ Fifth Dimension, brilliantly blended the burgeoning influence of Eastern exoticism into the rock music format, and the term “psychedelia” entered the common lexicon to stay.

Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup was a Mississippi Delta blues guitarist, singer and noted songwriter who was often known as “The Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll”, because even in the early ‘40s he was playing in a style which unmistakeably provided many of the essential roots of the musical revolution that was still more than a decade distant. He wrote classic songs like “That’s All Right Mama”, which became Elvis Presley’s first commercial recording, and other songs covered by Elvis like “My Baby Left Me”. He was a vital bridge between acoustic country blues and the electrified urban sound he developed after he hoboed his way to Chicago, and was among the first blues artists to play with bass and drums accompaniment. This great value 94-track 4-CD collection comprises all the records he made which were commercially released during the period covered by the anthology, encompassing his recordings which came out on the Bluebird, RCA, Checker, Trumpet, Champion, Groove and Fire labels. It gives a thorough and entertaining overview of the two key decades of his primary recording career.