Customer Reviews

Traditional Delta Blues

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
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This is one Johnny Shines' finest recordings. His masterful guitar work and vocals bring out the raw emotional power and poetry of the Delta Blues. Unfortunately because the recordings of other legendary Delta Bluesmen like Son House, Blind Wille Johnson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson are often of poor quality their work, and the genre itself, are often viewed as primitive and crude when nothing could be farther from the truth. Fortunately works like this exist where the sound quality is excellent, the material well selected, and the performer a master.

I highly recommend this recording.

Sweet acoustic blues, from sessions recorded back in 1972-74... It honestly doesn't get much better than this! Plenty of familiar old songs, but all presented in a distinctive, captivating personal style. Highly recommended.

I have dug and dug and found my way to this guy. He's a great player and awesome singer too. I learned so much from this disc and he has a lot of soul. I highly recommend this disc.

Pick this one up right away, to hear country acoustic blues the way it was meant to be played. Several great things about this particular recording: great fidelity, both straight acoustic and a lot of brilliant slide playing, features Johnny only--voice and guitar. This is a guy who ran with Robert Johnson, folks. And I would have to say he is better than Robert in terms of singing and playing. His voice is so powerful and moving, and his guitar work is second to none.

Although I find some of the tracks on here lacking in the energy of similar performances on other discs (particularly his version of "Terraplane," "Delta Pines," and "Honeybee." The first two are much better represented by his work on the "Hey-Ba-ba-re-bop" album -- although the original JOB recording of "Delta Pines" is great too, and "Honeybee" by his recording on the Wolf label) this is still some great music. I particularly enjoyed the last song, "Jim string Blues". This whole CD is Shines to the teeth: wonderful polyrhythms, stomping bass, keening slide, and Shine's great subtle yet dynamic vocals.

This is another excellent Johnny Shines album. All of the songs are straight-ahead Delta Blues. "Jim String" is my least favorite song on the album, but many Blues fans will surely love it because of its oddness and intense sound. "Glad Rags" and "Pet Rabbit" are particularly interesting as far as lyrics are concerned.