Delta Kream

The blues is a river with tributaries that flow into virtually every channel of American music. Dan Auerbach’s Nashville-based label Easy Eye Sound — Billboard’s Blues Label of the Year in 2022 — is charting a new course in “21st century juke joint blues.” The label’s new anthology Tell Everybody! is a bracing compilation, produced by Auerbach — winner of the GRAMMY Award as 2013 Producer of the Year, Non-Classical — featuring all new, exclusive recordings cut at Easy Eye Sound’s eponymous Nashville studio. From old masters to brilliant youngbloods, acoustic blues to roiling blues-rock, the collection is a fully realized survey of the blues tradition.

“There would be no Black Keys without this music,” said Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. `Hill Country Blues’represents the concentric circle where we crossed over musically as teenagers. To celebrate this music, the Black Keys have launched a new playlist titled Hill Country Blues.” It dives deeply into the history and heritage of the genre, an unusual regional style of the Blues specific to Northern Mississippi that inspired the The Black Keys’ new covers album, Delta Kream (out May 14 on Nonesuch). The Black Keys hand-selected a variety of songs for the list, ranging from RL Burnside to Junior Kimbrough to Jessie Mae Hemphill. The playlist includes artists both renowned and obscure, honoring the hill country blues traditions that inspired the Black Keys’s inception.