Blues 1

The Blues (Chess Series), Various Artists - Blues - Modern/Electric | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Mca
• ASIN: B000002PDM
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #328,034 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Don't Start Me to Talkin'

2. First Time I Met the Blues

3. Worried Life Blues

4. My Babe

5. Walkin' the Boogie

6. (I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man

7. Reconsider Baby

8. Smokestack Lightning

9. Juke

10. When the Lights Go Out

11. Just Make Love to Me

12. Spoonful

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Good Place to Start, May 31, 1999

By 

Craig Riecke (East Syracuse, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blues 1 (Audio CD)

You can't argue with the choices here for excellent postwar Chicago blues. All classics. If it weren't for the longer and more varied "Blues Masters Volume 2: Postwar Chicago Blues", I would've voted this 5 stars. Rock and roll was birthed here, baby!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A TRUE CLASSIC, July 23, 2010

By 

paul vernon "an old Sailor" (Virginia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blues 1 (Audio CD)

This is a straight reissue of the original US Chess vynil album, then issued in the UK on Pye in 1964, which also happens to be the very first Blues record I bought, at age 13. Therefore it's as much nostalgia as anything else to me, so I bought it on CD even though I already had everything elsewhere, but it's still a true clasic with not a dud on it. Let's hear it for Chess records. They changed my life.If I could have been anybody else in life, I'd like to have been Len Chess. Or maybe Sophia Loren........

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ****1/2 - excellent sampler, June 15, 2004

By 

Docendo Discimus (Vita scholae) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blues 1 (Audio CD)

The only thing wrong with this tremendous collection of 50s and early 60s blues singles is that it clocks it at just over 32 minutes, and that's just not enough, even considering that it was originally issued in the LP age (1963).

But there is no arguing with what is here. The first of six "The Blues" volumes from MCA/Chess is probably the best of the series, drawing from the vast Chess catalogues of men like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson (II), Buddy Guy, and John Lee Hooker. And these are not throwaways...Wolf is represented by "Spoonful" and the eerie and powerful "Smokestack Lightnin'", Sonny Boy Williamson by the superb "Don't Start Me To Talkin'", Muddy Waters by "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "I Just Want To Make Love To You" (which is called by its original title, "Just Make Love To Me", on the cover). Harmonica ace Little Walter Jacobs' first hit, the instrumental "Juke" is here as well, as is his excellent recording of Willie Dixon's "My Babe", and soulful bluesman Jimmy Witherspoon's best song, "When The Lights Go Out", is another of the highlights.

The annotation is mediocre, and this album has long since been supplanted by other (longer) compilations, but it remains a great introduction to classic Chicago blues. If you're new to the blues, this will convince you of its merit. And if it doesn't, well then nothing will.