Customer Reviews

The Roots of Led Zeppelin

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This thorough compilation is yet another of the great box sets Proper in England has been putting out. The Proper folks offer great selections at very reasonable prices for multi cd box sets. I found the music in this collection to be some of the clearest recordings I have heard from the old blues and I believe the chosen songs are consistent with the belief that these songs inspired the Zeppelin. The first cd is Country Blues, the second some country a transition to City Blues and then some early Rock and Roll. The third cd has many of the early rock and roll favorites that helped to define this type of music.

If you are in the early stages of educating yourself on the early country blues then this is a purchase you need to make. Some of the artists who were new to me were Blind Willie Johnson, Memphis Minnie, Robert Wilkins and Bukka White. I had read of them in Ted Gioia's excellent "Delta Blues" book but until you hear them......whoa!

There is another "The Roots of Led Zeppelin" in the marketplace. It is one cd and while it has many of the country blues in this Proper product it offers John Fahey's "Dance of the Inhabitants of the Palace of King Philip XIV of Spain", two Yardbird pieces and a Jake Holmes "Dazed and Confused" done before the Zeppelin offering. This cd is offered by the Great American Music label and is recommended for those who want to purchase only one cd.

The only negative I can offer on this presentation is the printed material included in the box. The letter font size is small and the contrast with the background is muddied so that reading it becomes very challenging. I think a solid color background would have been more successful. Those of you with younger eyes may not notice this complaint.

Hello Led Zeppelin fans, well here you go folks. I saw the Amazon recomendation of this Box Set for me and I thought, cool, more Led Zeppelin music for my collection, that I did not already have. This is not Led Zeppelin, but the artists and groups that helped to formulate what they were about, great, a really nice surprise for me here, to learn more about them. The reinterpreting, repackaging and remarking of the whole spectrum from Blues to Country to Rock `n' Roll and R & B music. Yeah, I know it is not a music industry secret and yes we all knew where they had got their ideas from, right? This Box Set of "The Roots of Led Zeppelin", gave me some insight into the seeds of one of the most powerful sounds of the 20th century and my most favorite rock group of all time. This set is put together in a chronologic order, so that you not only hear how the individual genres progressed, but you also hear how they all cross-pollinated on their way to becoming THE Rock sound from the 60's through the 70's and beyond. Now do not expect newly re-mastered sounds here on these CD's, some of the cuts have pops and crackles and stuff, but that is OK with me for what this is. The "Talkin' Led Zeppelin" DVD talks about the band and its roots and contains interviews with Charles Shaar Murray, Nigel Williamson and Sid Griffin plus the curator of Sun Studios in Memphis as well as Delta historian Robert Birdsong, complete with extensive liner notes and a generous helping of relevant images (a 30 page booklet), just great stuff for all of us Zeppelin fans in the world. It is a great deal for 3 CD's of great music and a DVD also, in my opinion.

I also uploaded the scans here, that I did for the individual CD's and the DVD, both front and back, I used the front scans for my computer (Windows Media Player & Zune software) images of the album covers.

Highly recomended for music fans, you do not have to be a Led Zeppelin fan to enjoy this Box Set.

VERY GOOD PRICE for so much music that comes with it

If you like rocknroll and want to know about the REAL people that started the magic, this is the perfect way to know the artists.

Great collection of early rock songs. Perfect to see where Zep came from. Interesting to see the songs that where "Page" and ones that where "Plant"

Great compilation of music which influenced Led Zeppelin. I never realized just how deep their roots into blues went, and this album helps illustrate that! Music quality is as good as can be expected from masters that are as old as some of these must be. Pops and clicks have been removed, so all you hear are the vocals and music as originally intended. Overall, worth the purchase.