Woody Mann The Art of Acoustic Blues Guitar Early Roots

Big Bill Broonzy was viewed as a beloved country blues player when he died in 1958, a master of raw and authentic-sounding folk-blues. But this public image, although Broonzy worked hard to maintain it in his later years, does him a bit of a disservice. He was much more than a rustic relic, however well he played the part. Broonzy was an excellent and even sophisticated guitarist, starting out in the '30s as a rag and hokum player but he was versatile enough to work with jazz and R&B combos, and his guitar approach was instrumental in the early formation of the Chicago blues sound. He was also a crafty songwriter, who managed to write blues pieces that bridged the line between traditional blues themes and modern structure. This 21-track collection focuses mostly on his early solo acoustic material, although there are some band pieces included as well toward the end of the sequence.

The Art of Noise‘s 1987 album In No Sense? Nonsense! is reissued as a two-CD deluxe edition in November 2018. Gary Lagan had left after In Visible Silence leaving Anne Dudley and J.J. Jeczalik to continue as a duo. Dudley recalls, “At that time, we were meeting new people, doing adverts and films and things. There was lots of new input. These adverts generated other new tracks. They would evolve and we’d agree they were good ideas. And we’d ask each other what would happen if we did this, this and this? So that kept everything evolving.” The reissue features newly-remastered audio including bonus seven-inch and 12-inch mixes including collaborations with Paul McCartney (the Art of Noise ‘Spies Like Us’ remix) and Duane Eddy (‘Spies’). Additionally, there are 22 unreleased recordings from the sessions, taken from the original master tapes.