The Real Folk Blues

More Real Folk Blues Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. 2007.	His Best :(Little Walter)The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection Marion "Little Walter" Jacobs is perhaps the most influential harmonica player on contemporary blues, and his collection is a great place to start. He was trained by Muddy Waters, but brought a more swinging feel to blues. Muddy and his band accompany Little Walter on many hits, ...	Woodstock Album When The Band's drummer Levon Helm set up a Woodstock-based recording studio and production company in 1975, his first client was the legendary bluesman Muddy Waters. Surrounding him with familiar sidemen Pinetop Perkins and Bob Margolin, plus such simpatico rock and blues stalwa...	Hoodoo Man Blues This 1965 album is where vocalist and harmonica player Junior Wells comes into his own. An early collaboration with Buddy Guy, the two of them sum up the 1960s funk-rock-blues that lay ahead. Hoodoo Man Blues inspired Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton, and a host of other musician-f...	King Biscuit Time
Down and Out Blues Sonny Boy Williamson (this being version 2.0, Rice Miller) was one of the great characters in blues, and his 1959 debut album absolutely overflows with personality. The Arkansas native was 60 years old by this time, but the years, if anything, made him an even more headstrong, co...	One Way Out The harmonica's not an especially prepossessing object, but in the skilled hands of Sonny Boy Williamson it was an incredibly expressive and versatile instrument. Though the material on One Way Out is mostly pretty obscure, that's no reason to avoid this collection; 15 killer tra...	The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions No Description AvailableNo Track Information AvailableMedia Type: CDArtist: HOWLIN' WOLFTitle: LONDON SESSIONSStreet Release Date: 08/08/1989	It Serves You Right to Suffer Originally released on Impulse in 1966, It Serves You Right to Suffer may not contain John Lee Hooker's better-known material, but it does serve up eight tracks of topnotch blues, complete with the boogie groove that Hooker does so well. The digital remastering for this CD is a b...	The Complete Recordings This two-CD box contains all 41 recordings Johnson made, including 12 alternate takes, and each cut remains a classic. This set's release in 1990 caused quite a stir, selling more than 500,000 copies, and, on the basis of endorsements from Eric Clapton and Keith Richards, introdu...

One great cut not on his "Best of" collections
Most of this is on the collections "My Best" and "Essential," but one killer cut is not: Got to Move. If you like Sonny Boy solos that start slow and then slay you with one intense phrase, "Got to Move" delivers.

****1/2. Many great latter-day Chess sides
"The Real Folk Blues" series, which saw releases featuring Sonny Boy, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters, was designed to attract young white blues fans to the Chess labels "electric" artists. There is nothing too folkish about these early-60s sides, and they are certainly no more "country" than Aleck "Rice" Miller's other Chess waxings (all of which were band-backed and electric), and while the MCA/Chess-compilations "His Best" and "The Essential Sonny Boy Williamson" remain the best career overviews, this one has a lot to offer as well, and a few of these songs don't show up on either "His Best" or the "Essential" anthology. "The Real Folk Blues" opens with one of Rice Miller's (Sonny Boy Williamson's) best, toughest songs, the powerful, up-tempo "One Way Out", followed by the equally magnificent "Too Young To Die". Not all of these twelve songs maintain the incredible level of quality found on MCA's main Sonny Boy-compilations, but even second-rate Rice Miller blows most other artists' best efforts out of the water, and his way with words was unmatched. The ageing harpist is totally believable when he delivers the line "When I first met you, little girl / I didn't know what I was doin' / Now we're all tied up / and my life is ruined" in his raspy voice. Other highlights include "Checkin' Up On My Baby", one of Rice Miller's finest songs, Willie Dixon's "Bring It On Home" (later nicked by Led Zeppelin), the irresistable, funky "Peach Tree", and the morose "Too Old To Think". This album is usually only available on a twofer-CD paired with its sister volume, "More Real Folk Blues", but since that one is (almost) as great, you won't hear any complaints from me. Sonny Boy could always be counted on to deliver a slice of intelligent, tightly arranged, supremely confident electric blues of the highest order.

top notch country blues with an urban twist
When Sonny Boy Williamson strutted into Chess studios, Chicago, and the rest of the blues appreciating public were taken by storm.THis is a fine album by Sonny Boy and his Chicago rhythm section. "Too Young To Die" is a fearful song about a violent woman, "Bring It On Home" is a Willie Dixon chart topper, And "One Way Out" is a furious tune, written by Elmore James and Sonny Boy about a failed one night stand. "Down Child" is a Chicago-land classic.Excellent album. All but a few tracks are included on Chess' "The Essential Sonny Boy Williamson."