Customer Reviews

The Best of the Chicago Blues

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Today, October 23, 2005...a drizzly, cold Sunday afternoon in Boston, I brought out this great 2-record vinyl LP from my old 60's-70's collection. As I wiped off the dust and placed it on my turntable, I flashed back to the hundreds of times over a 35-yr period that I've received tremendous pleasure and joy listening and turning my friends on to THE Blues as recorded on this LP. Having stood the classic test of time, it still sounds amazing after all these years...even with the scratches!
I'm thrilled that this album has been re-released as I'm about to order it on CD! A MUST FOR ANY LOVER OF THE BLUES AS WELL AS ANYONE OPEN TO EXPLORING THIS GREAT AMERICAN GENRE FOR THE TIME!

After heaing this LP for the first time, nothing was ever the same for me, musically, ever again. From this, I steadily found my way through the blues, and into straight ahead jazz. Hearing James (then 'Jimmy') Cotton's "Rocket 88", or Buddy Guy's rendition of "Money" still makes me shiver. This is a great compilation of some great urban, electric blues, as well as some 'pining' southern influenced rural stuff ( Johnny Young's "Stealin", "Mule Kickin 'In My Stall", "Tobacco Road"). Otis Spann's "Spann's Stomp" and "Twisted Snake" cross deep into the early jazz genre. Marvelous stuff here for real blues lovers.

A fine companion piece to Chicago/the Blues/ Today. A few tracks are duplicated on this but, but mainly, it's more of what is found on the earlier, classic, three cd set. Especially for fans of Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, James Cotton and a few of these other blues heroes. Even for a Vanguard blues anthology without Otis Rush, this is a wonderful set.

A great compliation of classic electric Chicago Blues. All the performances are top notch from Buddy Guy's "Sweet Little Angel" to Otis Spann's vituosity on the keyboards to the fat full sound of Big Walter Horton this CD is a winner in everyway. A must have!

I bought the three "Chicago Blues/Today" vinyl albums which pretty much are the source of this disc nearly forty-five years ago (subsequently replaced them with cds). This single disc represents the cream of that effort

Vanguard did an excellent job with the artists, and these are almost what Mr. Lomax would call field recordings.

Listening to these artists way-back-when sort of provided me with an appreciation of the roots of then-contemporary groups like the Stones, Bluesbreakers, Cream, Fleetwood Mac, and later LZ.

Of course the claim that this is the "best" of Chicago blues might be a little overstated insofar as you're missing Chess artists like Muddy and the Wolf. Nevertheless, this really is an excellent statement about the art of Windy City blues in the mid-1960s.

And don't worry that Otis Rush (who was recorded as part of this project) is missing. He was ill during the recording session and what was produced was far from his best effort.

Johnny Prescott daydreamed his way through the music that he was listening to just then on the little transistor that Ma Prescott, Martha to adults, had given him for Christmas after he has taken a fit when she quite reasonable suggested that a new set of ties to go with his white long-sleeved shirts might be a better gift, a better Christmas gift and more practical too, for a sixteen year old boy. No, he screamed he wanted a radio, a transistor radio, batteries included, of his own so that he could listen to whatever he liked up in his room, or wherever he was, and didn't have, understand, didn't have to listen to some Vaughn Monroe or Harry James 1940s war drum thing on the huge immobile radio downstairs in the Prescott living room. Strictly squaresville, cubed.

But as he listened to this the Shangra-la by The Four Coins that just finished up a few seconds ago and as this Banana Boat song by The Tarriers was starting its dreary trip he was not sure that those ties wouldn't have been a better deal, and more practical too. Ya, this so-called rock station, WAPX, had sold out to, well, sold out to somebody, because except for late at night, midnight late at night, one could not hear the likes of Jerry Lee, Carl, Little Richard, Fats, and the new, now that Elvis was gone, killer rocker, Chuck Berry who proclaimed loud and clear that Mr. Beethoven had better move alone, and said Mr. Beethoven best tell one and all of his confederates, including Mr. Tchaikovsky that rock `n' roll was the new sheriff in town. As he turned the volume down a little lower (that tells the tale right there, friends) as Rainbow (where the hell do they get these creepy songs from) by Russ Hamilton he was ready to throw in the towel though .

Desperate he fingered the dial looking for some other station when he heard this crazy piano riff starting to breeze through the night air, the heated night air, and all of a sudden Ike Turner's Rocket 88 blasted the airwaves. But funny it didn't sound like the whinny Ike's voice so he listened for a little longer, and as he later found out from the DJ it was actually a James Cotton Blues Band cover. After that performance was finished fish-tailing right after that one was a huge harmonica intro and what could only be mad-hatter Junior Wells doing When My Baby Left Me splashed through. No need to turn the dial further now because what Johnny Prescott had found in the crazy night air, radio beams bouncing every which way, was direct from Chicago, and maybe right off those hard-hearted Maxwell streets was Be-Bop Benny's Chicago Blues Radio Hour. Be-Bop Benny who started Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino on their careers, or helped.

Now Johnny, like every young high-schooler, every "with it" high schooler in the USA, had heard of this show, because even though everybody was crazy for rock and roll, just now the airwaves sounded like, well, sounded like music your parents would dance to, no, sit to at a dance, some kids still craved high rock. So this show was known mainly through the teenage grapevine but Johnny had never heard it because, no way, no way in hell was his punk little Radio Shack transistor radio with two dinky batteries going to have even strength to pick Be-Bop Benny's live show out in Chicago. So Johnny, and maybe rightly so, took this turn of events for a sign. And so when he heard that distinctive tinkle of the Otis Spann piano warming up to Spann's Stomp and up with his Someday added in he was hooked. And you know he started to see what Billie, Billie Bradley from over in Adamsville, meant when at a school dance where he had been performing with his band, Billie and the Jets, he mentioned that if you want to get rock and roll back you had better listen to blues, and if you want to listen to blues, blues that rock then you had very definitely had better get in touch with the Chicago blues as they came north from Mississippi and places like that.

And Johnny thought, Johnny who have never been too much south of Gloversville, or west of Albany, and didn't know too many people who had, couldn't understand why that beat, that da,da, da, Chicago beat sounded like something out of the womb in his head. But when he heard Big Walter Horton wailing on that harmonica on Rockin' My Boogie he knew it had to be in his genes.