Customer Reviews

Essential Blues Harmonica

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A lot of times when one purchases a blues recording, the tunes are all in the same style and sound the same. This is a great CD that mixes it up a bit, with harmonica greats from Little Walter to Rod Piazza. It is a great way to sample a lot of different artists and then buy more CDs once you know who you like. I hope House of Blues puts out another collection similar to this. Very enjoyable.

Not a good selection of the core of blues harmonica, so "Essential" is a misnomer. For instance, only one song by Little Walter and not one of his best-known. The amount of music is on the chintzy side, with an average of only 56 minutes per disk. The liner notes are terrible, about the worst I've ever seen for a well-known label. There are no recording dates and no discussion of individual songs, just a scatter-brained discussion of the history of blues harmonica in multi-colored ink with various font sizes so it's hard to read. I think this misplaced attempt at art was supposed to fool the purchaser into thinking that this was somehow cool. Aficionados of the harmonica want facts, like the recording date and who played in the band besides the harp player, not fluff.

This is OOP, so you might want to pick-it-up to fill-in gaps in your collection, but don't waste a lot of dough on it.