John Peel favourites and Dandelion Records proto-metallers Stack Waddy burned brightly and briefly during a recording career that barely lasted two years in the early 1970s. Leaving behind two albums of pounding, blues and psych infused heavy rock, some BBC appearances and a handful of outtakes, the Manchester four-piece imprinted themselves firmly enough on the memories of anybody who saw them to remain cult favourites today. Drawn together here are all of Stack Waddy’s Dandelion Records recordings - the ‘Stack Waddy’ and ‘Bugger Off!’ albums alongside a John Peel compered BBC In Concert performance and the aforementioned outtakes. Raw, bloody and never far from a beer or two, the band tear through Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, The Kinks, Zappa, Beefheart and even Sinatra, as well as their own excellent material.
Broke, Black & Blue delivers multiple surprises within its 100 songs of prewar blues. Arranged chronologically by Joop Visser, the set admirably covers the first 22 years of recorded blues, 1924 to 1946, from vaudeville and Delta to boogie-woogie and jump blues. It's a swell gift for anyone wanting to learn more about the history of blues. But old-timers will be pleased, too, as special attention has been paid to culling rare and idiosyncratic tracks by the well-known and the obscure. The first three discs present single tracks by artists as diverse as the Memphis Jug Band, De Ford Bailey, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Skip James, Peetie Wheatstraw, Lonnie Johnson, and Bukka White, alongside unknowns such as Isaiah "The Mississippi Moaner" Nelson, Barbecue Bob and Laughing Charley, Ed Andrews, Chicken Wilson, and Bumble Bee Slim. On the fourth disc, this convention is jettisoned to luxuriate in a series of very rare sides of lovely, oddly subdued boogie-woogie and jump blues by Jimmie Gordon, Johnny Temple, and Lee Brown.
Music was paramount in New Orleans, a town where they liked jazz with their blues. Regular blues musicians like Richard ‘Rabbit’ Brown got on disc when the record companies came to town. In general bluesmen and women came from out of town for their sessions, Texans like Lillian Glinn, Will Day, Oscar Woods and Blind Willie Johnson or Mississippians Bo Carter, the Mississippi Sheiks and Walter Jacobs, or out-of-towners like Little Brother Montgomery. New Orleans also saw the first recordings by fascinating Cajun musicians like Amédé Ardoin, Dewey Segura, Lawrence Walker and Cléoma Falcon, who put down their version of 12-bar blues.
LIMITED EDITION 180-Gram audiophile 15-LP numbered vinyl box set with exclusive extras in a Georgia-style solid wood peach crate. All nine albums have been newly remastered by Kevin Reeves [Idlewild South 45th Anniversary (2015), The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings (2014)] from the original analog stereo master tapes to 192kHz 24-bit and cut by Abbey Road Mastering Studios onto copper plates using their DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) lathe for superior audio fidelity.
This 52-disc (no, that is not a typo) comp, ABC of the Blues: The Ultimate Collection from the Delta to the Big Cities, may just indeed live up to its name. There are 98 artists represented , performing 1,040 tracks. The music begins at the beginning (though the set is not sequenced chronologically) with Charlie Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson, and moves all the way through the vintage Chicago years of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, with stops along the way in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, New York, and all points in between. Certainly, some of these artists are considered more rhythm & blues than purely blues artists: the inclusion of music by Johnny Otis, Wynonie Harris, Bo Diddley, and others makes that clear…
This 52-disc (no, that is not a typo) comp, ABC of the Blues: The Ultimate Collection from the Delta to the Big Cities, may just indeed live up to its name. There are 98 artists represented , performing 1,040 tracks. The music begins at the beginning (though the set is not sequenced chronologically) with Charlie Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson, and moves all the way through the vintage Chicago years of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, with stops along the way in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, New York, and all points in between. Certainly, some of these artists are considered more rhythm & blues than purely blues artists: the inclusion of music by Johnny Otis, Wynonie Harris, Bo Diddley, and others makes that clear.
This 52-disc (no, that is not a typo) comp, ABC of the Blues: The Ultimate Collection from the Delta to the Big Cities, may just indeed live up to its name. There are 98 artists represented , performing 1,040 tracks. The music begins at the beginning (though the set is not sequenced chronologically) with Charlie Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson, and moves all the way through the vintage Chicago years of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, with stops along the way in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, New York, and all points in between. Certainly, some of these artists are considered more rhythm & blues than purely blues artists: the inclusion of music by Johnny Otis, Wynonie Harris, Bo Diddley, and others makes that clear…
Universally hailed as the King of the Blues, the legendary B.B. King was without a doubt the single most important electric guitarist of the second half of the 20th century. His bent notes and staccato picking style influenced legions of contemporary bluesmen, while his gritty and confident voice -capable of wringing every nuance from any lyric- provided a worthy match for his passionate playing. In The Many Faces of B.B. King we will review many of his most celebrated collaborations including Stevie Ray Vaughan, Etta James, Chaka Khan and Pat Metheny, enjoy plenty of his hits that spanned a six-decade career and finally, enjoy a list of who’s who in The Blues Hall of Fame with names such as Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Slim Harpo and Sonny Boy Williamson. The Many Faces Of B.B. King is a fantastic album that showcases the work of one of the most celebrated musicians from our time.