Customer Reviews

Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: The Allman Brothers Band

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

 

 

At first glance, it is hard to understand why Martin Scorsese would want to bring us another compilation of the Allman Brothers Band. There is nothing new here and certainly nothing that cannot be found elsewhere. Moreover, everyone knows that the Allman Brothers play a southern rock style grounded in the blues. Scorsese is producing the PBS blues special which will air September 28, 2003 and therein seems to lie the method behind the Scorsese madness. With that in mind, it becomes clear that Scorsese hand picked these songs to highlight the way rock bands have popularized old blues songs written and performed to limited and largely black audiences in juke joints years before the band played them. The selection includes Muddy Water's "No More Tears" and "Can't Lose What You Never Had", Elmore James "Done Somebody Wrong", T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday", Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man and Sonny Boy Williamson's "One Way Out" among others. In that light, it is fair sampling of the Bands rendition of other musicians work although it does ignore the bands original contributions to this same genre. Overall a decent compilation but the sound quality could have been better.

This is a very interesting collection of some of the Allman Brothers Band's bluesiest material.
Some of these songs are well-known ("Trouble No More", "Statesboro Blues", "One Way Out"), while others are quite rare, like the Allmans' rendition of John Lee Hooker's "Dimples", but virtually everything is great.
Serious Allman Brothers fans will own most or all of this material already, of course, and casual fans may be better off with a "real" career-spanning compilation like the brand-new "Anthology". But if a collection of the Allmans' bluesy early-70s recordings is what you're after, this is just about as good as it gets.

Some CD's of the Scorsese set are pretty lackhuster, but this is great. No country rock or psychedelia, just blues. And the great news is that you not only get the best blues from their first three records from studio (Trouble no more is one of the best blues covers I've ever heard), some rare tracks, but also songs from the great Fillmore
east live album, which show how powerful the band was and what a gorgeous slide guitarist Duane Allman was.
Get It.

Agree with previous reviewer (reno64) that while the music is amazing, an even better idea would be to get all of the Allman Brother's early albums (especially Live at the Fillmore) than just this single disk. That said, however, the selection on this disk is a great sampler for people who might want just one Allman Brothers album to add to their blues collection. There's no way in the world I could give this collection of music any less than 5 stars. I'd give it 6 if I could. Listen to that sweet slide guitar on the final track (You Don't Love Me) and you'll know why Rolling Stone recently picked Duane Allman as the 2nd best guitarist (ahead of Clapton and BB King).

Sure, the music is amazing. I suppose you can call this a Allman Brothers sampler.

If you've never bought an Allman Brothers cd though, you're SO MUCH better off buying their albums. Start with these, The Allman Brothers Band, Idlewild South, At Fillmore East, Eat a Peach and Brothers and Sisters.

Great Disk purchased used and had Library markings on it. Hope it was not stolen.