The Best of Chicago

Culled from various live recordings Junior Wells made in his final year or so, Live Around the World: The Best Of is not a "best-of." Instead, it intends to present the legendary Chicago bluesman in a late-career renaissance - or, as Donald E. Wilcock says in his affectionate liner notes, "This album is not the last gasps of a dying legend." To a certain extent that's true, because Wells does not sound tired, weary, or disengaged. He turns in spirited, energetic performances throughout and his harp playing remains a marvel, never following expected routes, always melodic and invigorating. That doesn't mean the album itself is invigorating, something that is a worthy bookend to Hoodoo Man Blues, since it suffers from the problem that plagues so many contemporary blues albums - clean, precise production with perfectly separated instruments, plus the band's tendency to veer into funk vamps instead of dirty grooves…

Born in Aberdeen, Mississippi, Chester Burnett, better known by his stage name Howlin' Wolf, helped modernize the country blues with his powerful vocal style and harmonica work and his ability to connect with an audience no matter what stage he prowled. His classic sides for Chess Records, several of which are collected here, including "Smokestack Lightnin'," "Sitting on Top of the World," "How Many More Years," and "Back Door Man," were instrumental in helping shape the classic sound of Chicago blues, which in turn helped shape everything that came after it.

Buddy Guy revitalized his career when he signed with Silvertone Records in the early '90s. His first album for the label, Damn Right, I've Got the Blues, was a smash success, earning critical acclaim, awards, and sales hand over fist. Prior to that record, he was a legend only among blues fans; afterward, he was a star. Although it was a bit too rock-oriented and slick for purists, Damn Right was a terrific album, setting the pace not only for Guy but for modern electric blues in the '90s. As the decade wore on, Guy continued to make albums for Silvertone, some of them a little complacent, others quite excellent. Buddy's Baddest: The Best of Buddy Guy attempts to summarize those years in 14 songs, including three previously unreleased cuts.

If there's a blues harmonica player alive today who doesn't have this landmark album in their collection, they're either lying or had their copy stolen by another harmonica player. This 12-song collection is the one that every harmonica player across the board cut their teeth on. All the hits are here: "My Babe," "Blues With a Feeling," "You Better Watch Yourself," "Off the Wall," "Mean Old World," and the instrumental that catapulted him from the sideman chair in Muddy Waters' band to the top of the R&B charts in 1952, "Juke." Walter's influence to this very day is so pervasive over the landscape of the instrument that this collection of singles is truly one of the all-time greatest blues harmonica albums, one of the all-time greatest Chicago blues albums, and one of the first ten albums you should purchase if you're building your blues collection from the ground floor up.

Buddy Guy today remains one of the true international superstars of the Blues. One of his musically most glorious periods was the three classic albums he cut for JSP Records ("D.J. Play My Blues" "Breaking Out" and "Live at the Checkerboard Lounge") and the guesting on brother Phil Guy's wonderful debut album "Red Hot Blues". This compilation features some of the best cuts from that period and those albums. Buddy plays some hot guitar here and is stylistically moving forward from his sixties stuff to the ultra commercial things of today. Buddy always knew that the world would catch up eventually and he would become a superstar - the music here will tell you why.

Highly-regarded blues singer and harmonica player, an unpredictable character, and a major figure of Chicago blues.
Sonny Boy Williamson was, in many ways, the ultimate blues legend. By the time of his death in 1965, he had been around long enough to have played with Robert Johnson at the start of his career and Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Robbie Robertson at the end of it. In between, he drank a lot of whiskey, hoboed around the country, had a successful radio show for 15 years, toured Europe to great acclaim and simply wrote, played and sang some of the greatest blues ever etched into black phonograph records. His delivery was sly, evil and world-weary, while his harp-playing was full of short, rhythmic bursts one minute and powerful, impassioned blowing the next…