Customer Reviews

MISSISSIPPI BLUES

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I heard this cd while shopping and EVERY TUNE was so hot I had to have it! Every track is unique, the artists soulful and exude the blues from their bones. This CD takes you to another place and time where it is good to feel the blues!

I love this CD. Gritty blues the way it is meant to be played. Great production as well and nice variety of performers. This is one of the best Putumayo CDs I have heard so far.

If you like good old Delta blues....then you'll LOVE this CD. I have one and gave one as a gift and the entire family listened to it over Christmas and everyone loved it.

Bought today: 2002-02-28. Listened to this music in a loop on a roundtrip from Ottawa, Ontario to Ogdensburg, NY and back. Very rewarding 3 hours. This is infectious American Roots/Blues.

bought it as a gift for my hubby, but I love it too.

After hurricane Katrina has raged in this region the Sound of the Mississippi delta music became all the more precious. Of course "St. James Infirmary", the standard ballad for all New Orleans funerals, is represented. It talks about the pain of a man who has seen his wife a last time: "so sweet, so cool, so fair, stretched out on a long white table" in the hospital. What a music will arise now, after the dead bodies are "disposed of" with so few care. I still have a photo in my mind as a woman (near the flooded Canal Street) shoves her dead husband, whom she has bound on a door, through the water. Only the music with this Mississippi feeling, no further newspaper report, will soothe me in such moments. But if I hear the calming voice of Mississippi John Hurt again - or the infectious energy of Tina Turner - then, I think, it will go on again...

This is another good CD I found at my friend Regina's shop, Art and Soul, in Vicksburg, MS (the south end of the Delta). It is a sampling of 11 vocalists, with various instrumental (guitar, harmonica, and/or keyboard with backup on drums, etc.). It is one of the collections put together by Putumayo, and includes a small bonus booklet inside the CD case giving a brief background of the musician/vocalists included - some are deceased, i.e., Luther Allison in 1997, Junior Wells in 1998, John Lee Hooker in 2001, and Memphis Minnie in 1963. I have it playing on my Windows media player as I write this. Playing time of the individual selections ranges from 2:23 (Bobby Bland) to 5:53 (Junior Wells).

Compilations like this can be a bit tricky. If you're a devotee of the genre, your probably don't have much use for it and if you're new to the genre, you don't know if you're getting a good representation. Well, you can rest assured you're getting a great compilation of Mississippi blues with this disc. The variety is good yet all true to the genre. A good span of time is covered as well as style. Overall, this is a great introduction and should go a long way to helping you decide if you want to explore further into this realm.

A nice variety of blues. All for the most part dance-able with a nice solid driving beat. I can (and have) listened to the whole cd several times on end, and didn't get tired of it.

Just based on the songs in this collection I am giving it a 5 star, excellent compilation. However as a warning, I just bought the MP3 album through the link above and the cd is an entirely different album.