Spoon So Easy: Chess Years

Jimmy Witherspoon | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 19, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Mca
• ASIN: B000002Q69
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #631,021 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. It Ain't No Secret

2. Ain't Nobody's Business

3. Live So Easy

4. Congratulations

5. I Can Make It With you

6. Goin' Down Slow

7. When The Lights Go Out

8. Crying

9. T.W.A.

10. Danger

11. I Don't Know Why (Why Do I Love Like I Do)

12. Garfield Avenue

13. Mack & Jay

14. Just To Prove My Love To You

Editorial Reviews

This CD is an out of print collectible! It is the original MCA Chess release. Catalog CHD-93003. There is a drill hole through the case and booklet.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "...One Day We've Got Ham And Bacon...The Next Day...", September 6, 2009

By 

Mark Barry, Reckless Records, London (UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Spoon So Easy: Chess Years (Audio CD)

Transferred from the original analogue mono tapes by DOUG SCHWARTZ, "Spoon So Easy" was released in 1990 in the USA on CHD-93003. It was a 12-track LP and 14-track CD (with the two CD bonus tracks being "Mack & Jay" and "Just To Prove My Love To You"). This early Chess compilation is a mix of 7" singles, an LP track and several previously unreleased outtakes. The period is 1954 and 1955 on Chess' subsidiary label CHECKER.

"It Ain't No Secret" is Checker 826, "When The Lights Go Out" and "I Can Make It With You" are the A & B of Checker 798 and "I Don't Know Why (Why Do I Love You Like I Do)" is Checker 826. "Goin Down Slow" is off the Anthology LP "Blues: Shoutin' Swingin' And Makin' Love" (Chess LP 412) while the other 8 tracks are all previously unreleased. Willie Dixon composed the excellent "Live So Easy" (previously unreleased), "I Can Make It With You" and the sexed-up single that should have charted "When The Lights Go Out".

Soundwise - it's good - rather than great - but in 2009, the transfer quality of 1990 is really showing its age - especially in the light of Erick Labson's stunning remasters of almost all the Chess catalogue in 1998 and onwards in the 2000s. The short but affectionate liner notes are by MARY KATHERINE ALDIN of the LIVING BLUES Magazine.

Slow blues - a couple of shouters - it's a good set, and cheap too - but like so many of the Chess compilations of the period, it's in real need of an upgrade.