Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music

You know the situation is getting desperate when a compilation recycles material from an outtakes collection released a decade prior. Such is the case with The Best of Syd Barrett: Wouldn't You Miss Me?, a package that basically combines the best of Syd Barrett's two proper albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, with a number of previously issued outtakes and a straggler from producer and Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour's vaults ("Bob Dylan's Blues"). But to be perfectly fair, the now-recycled outtakes release in question, 1989's Opel, was a rare instance where such a release lived up to the quality of the artist's proper studio albums.

This tribute album breaks no new ground but does a superb job of re-creating the Chicago ensemble sound, as well as the songs, of the latter-day Muddy Waters Band. That comes as no surprise, since the core group here literally was Muddy Waters' backup unit from 1974 to 1980: Bob Margolin and Luther "Guitar Jr" Johnson on guitars, Pinetop Perkins on piano, Jerry Portnoy on harp, Calvin Jones on bass, and Willie Smith on drums. Each of these Muddy alumni takes a vocal turn (Margolin takes two). While none of them matches the majesty of Muddy's voice, they certainly have the spirit of the thing down pat.

You know the situation is getting desperate when a compilation recycles material from an outtakes collection released a decade prior. Such is the case with The Best of Syd Barrett: Wouldn't You Miss Me?, a package that basically combines the best of Syd Barrett's two proper albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, with a number of previously issued outtakes and a straggler from producer and Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour's vaults ("Bob Dylan's Blues")…