Customer Reviews

King of the Slide Guitar

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This reissue of the original 50-track "King Of The Slide Guitar" box set, with an additional 14 tracks, is magnificent. It presents every song Elmore James recorded for the Fire, Fury and Enjoy labels in the early 60s, with great sound and a few interesting rarities and alternate takes.

You'll need to hear Elmore's earlier recordings as well, of course (available on the fine "The Classic Early Recordings" box set, ASIN: B000000W62), but the fact that a few of his best early songs weren't re-recorded for Bobby Robinson's labels, and thus are missing from this collection, doesn't really detract anything from its greatness.
There are still so many blues classics here it's unbelievable - "Dust My Broom", "It Hurts Me Too", "The Sky Is Crying", "Shake Your Moneymaker" and "The Twelve Year Old Boy" are the best-known, obviously, but the rest of this material is not sub-par in any way...every song is good, most are great, and a lot of them are just magnificent, some of the most powerful electric blues you'll ever hear.

The brand of fiery electric blues that Elmore James played more than forty years ago packed an incredible punch. It is supremely gritty (in spite of the urbane arrangements featuring piano and saxophone), and Elmore had one of the greatest, most intense and expressive voices you'll ever hear. His slashing slide guitar playing has made him more influential than any other single guitarist.

"King Of The Slide Guitar" also includes several terrific instrumentals, like the smouldering "Up Jumped Elmore" and the dance-friendly boogie "Bobby's Rock". And even though most of the approximately fifty different songs aren't well known outside the circle of fanatical Elmore James-fan, there is an incredible number of high-quality cuts here.
The tough raver "Rollin' & Tumblin'" easily matches anything Cream or the Yardbirds ever did, "Done Somebody Wrong" is virtually hard rock, and the slide leads and saxophone fills on the funky "Can't Stop Loving My Baby" all blend together to create the kind of blues song you normally only dream about.

This wonderful collection of music can easily match any of the great Chess box sets, and that is saying something! Elmore James and the Broomdusters rock incredibly hard on their definitive reading of Robert Johnson's "Dust My Broom", and they smoulder on the ultimate slow blues, James' own "The Sky Is Crying".
There are so many excellent songs here that rarely or never show up on various Elmore James-compilations: "Got To Move", "Person To Person", "Strange Angels", "You Know You're Wrong", "Hand In Hand", "I've Got A Right To Love My Baby", "She's Got To Go"...well, just get it, allright?

What can I say but WOW! "King of the Slide Guitar" is an apt title for James who was taken from us before his time.

The man could flat out play and belt out a tune from the bottom of his heart.

If you love the blues, heck if you love music I highly recommend picking up this set!

Look, this guy was magic and this 3 CD set is just great! You must add this to your collection!!

Great CD, great music.
I just can't get enough of Elmore James.
Just listen to It Hurts Me Too, this song speaks for itself.

Being a HUGE fan of Elmore James, I think this CHARLEY box is one of his best collections: great packaging and excellent booklet, along with an outstanding selection of cuts! Certainly one can compare earlier versions against latter ones, yet Elmore pours his HEART AND SOUL into each track on this cd! Also, there are no repetitious alternates or takes which crowd, for the sake of completeness, some other boxes like ACE's "The Classic Early Recordings 1951-1956," which is outstanding in its own right. Perhaps I can be called a "completist," but I don't think Elmore EVER LAID DOWN A "BAD" track!!! I highly recommend this box to any Elmore fan. 'Nuf said!

For the record and this seems a good place to publish it, Lillian McMurry of Trumpet Records did not record "Dust My Broom" "seriptiously" as on critic opined.

I interviewed Lillian McMurry for my upcoming Sonny Boy Williamson II documentary and biography. She showed me the royalty check that Elmore James signed and cashed the day BEFORE the session and told me about the recording process in her studios. This was before audio tape recording and thus she had to place the needle on the acetate exactly at the beginning of the tune, listen very closely to the music when it was being recorded (she couldn't play the record until a test pressing was made) and toss it if there was any problem. There is no way this could be done without Elmore being a fully willing participant.

Elmore did record the one side for Trumpet (as well as long lost test recording as part of Sonny Boy Williamson's band) and was subsequently seduced by the Bihari brothers who signed him to an exclusive recording contract which required that he not record for a year until Trumpet's contract expired.

Faced with the problem of this amazing single recording needing a second side, Lillian got a man she only knew as Slim to record "Catfish Blues." He was identified on both sides of the record as "Elmo James."

Faced with the problem of following up such a hit (independent record companies rarely got paid for the first records if the distributors or record store didn't have to pay to get the next recording), she got Big Joe Williams to record two tunes with Sonny Boy Williamson as "Elmer James"

To further add to the confusion, Ms. McMurry signed up Sonny Boy Williamson II as "Willie Williamson." Willie was Alex "Rice" Miller's bother's first name and Williamson was what Sonny Boy was using after John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson who died four years earlier.

Oddly while Lillian knew he was not the original "Sonny Boy Williamson" she was unaware of the highly-influential King Biscuit Time KFFA radio show on which his fame was based. The folks at KFFA were ironically unaware of the 1937 "Little Boy Blue" WEBQ radio show in Harrisburg Illinois on a 50,000 watt clear channel radio station.

These were the times when everyone didn't learn every fact on CNN at the same time and secrets could be kept.

My thirst for a library of Elmore James recordings led me to purchase this collection. I could hardly wait the time it took to arrive! My collection previously consisted of 3 overlapping compilations of his most popular recordings, "Whose Muddy Shoes" on Chess, "Blues After Hours" on Crown, and a set of Big Joe Turner recordings on Atlantic with James providing backup.

This 3-CD box set, however, was a disappointment. An uneven collection consisting mostly (about half) of late recordings after his second heart attack and self-imposed temporary retirement, it finds James trudging through uninspired and often tedious re-recordings of much of his earlier material. Even the liner notes confess, "It marked the return of Elmore to the studio, but the results were perhaps too raw for release at the time... Robinson was trying out unfamiliar material on Elmore which was taking up a lot of studio time. Instead of seeking perfection, Abramson suggested instead that they try running through Elmore's repertoire as if it were a live set. The results [were] enough for a double-album..."

Don't misinterpret "too raw for release" or "running through Elmore's repertoire" as complimentary. Your time and money is better spent on the aforementioned titles unless you place a high value on listening to everything James ever recorded, if only once. Even then you might find it a let-down. Stick to his earlier stuff and let his memory RIP.

I agree with the reviewer who said this set was for "scholars". If you want a CD that you can play for your friends, that sounds good all the way through, this isn't it. There are a lot of tracks on here that just sound like generic R&B. Of course there are also brilliant recordings, but you'd want to make your own "mix" before you just sit back and listen without hitting the fast forward button.

This set includes Elmore James's entire recorded output, except for the recordings he made for the Chess and Meteor/Flair labels. As such it's a good place for DJ's or afficionados to start building a complete collection.

The liner notes include a good synopsis of all of Elmore's recording sessions, including those not represented in this set.