Customer Reviews

Living The Blues: Blues Greats

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The track listing in the Editorial Reviews is incorrect (as is the image of the CD cover which might or might not be corrected by the time you read this). The CD "Living the Blues: Blues Greats" track listing is:

Smoke Stack Lightning - Howlin' Wolf
Crawling King Snake Blues - John Lee Hooker;
Double Trouble - Otis Rush;
It Hurts Me Too - Elmore James;
Bright Lights, Big City - Jimmy Reed;
Little by Little - Junior Wells;
29 Ways - Willie Dixon;
One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer - Amos Milburn and His Aladdin Chickenshackers;
T- Bone Shuffle - T-Bone Walker;
Every Day I Have the Blues - B. B. King;
Juke - Little Walter and His Night Cats;
I Just Want to Make Love to You - Muddy Waters;
Help Me - Sonny Boy Williamson;
Fannie Mae - Buster Brown;
Walking by Myself - Jimmy Rogers;
Driving Wheel - Little Junior Parker;
We're Gonna Make It - Little Milton;
Cry Cry Cry - Bobby "Blue" Bland;
Wee Wee Hours - Chuck Berry;
Black Night - Charles Brown.

It's an amazing collection of classic Blues songs (actually the whole series is) especially for someone just getting into the genre and not sure what to pick up.

February Is Black History Month

As those familiar with this space know I have spent a good amount of ink touting various old time blues legends that I `discovered' in my youth. My intention, in part, is to introduce a new generation to this roots music but also to demonstrate a connection between this black-centered music and the struggle for black liberation that both blacks and whites can appreciate. Like virtually all forms of music that lasts more than five minutes the blues has had its ups and downs. After becoming electric and urbanized in the immediate post-World War II period it was eclipsed by the advent of rock&roll then made a comeback in the mid- 1960's with the surge of English bands that grew up on this music, and so on. Most recently there was mini-resurgence with the justifiably well-received Martin Scorsese PBS six-part blues series in 2003. A little earlier, in the mid-1990's, there had also been a short-lived reemergence spearheaded by the `discovery' of urban blues pioneer Robert Johnson's music.

The long and short of this phenomenon is that commercial record production of this music waxed and waned reflecting that checkered history. I have, in the interest of variety for the novice, selected these CDs as a decent cross-section of blues (and its antecedents in earlier forms of roots music) as to gender, time and type. The following reviewed CDs represent first of all an attempt by record companies to meet the 1990's surge. They also represent a hard fact of musical life. Like rock&roll the blues will never die. Praise be. Feast on these compilations.

Every Day He May Have The Blues But You Won't

Living The Blues: Blues Greats, MCA Records, 1995

If you have read my review of "Living The Blues: Blues Masters" then this compilation is an extension of that CD as to the level of talent. Very good work ,as is to be expected, by Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, the under-appreciated Otis Rush on "Double Trouble" place this CD just fraction below the previously reviewed "Blues Masters". Additional standout work includes impresario Willie Dixon (who deserves and will receive individual review later) on his own "29 Ways". T-Bone Walker on his "T-Bone Shuffle" (was there a better electric blues guitar player?), Little Walter (and his incredible harmonica) on "Juke" and "Driving Wheel" by Little Junior Parker.