Great Collection but No Liner Notes
Craig A. Clagett | Elkridge, MD USA | 08/15/2003
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This is an enjoyable collection. Since many early blues performers used the same guitar style for many if not most of their songs, listening to a full album by a single performer can be unbearably repetitious to those new to the genre. So compilations like this are really the way to go.This set includes two of Robert Johnson's 41 recordings, all put down in 1936-37. Both Kind Hearted Woman Blues and Stop Breakin' Down Blues display his trademark vocalizing. Loveless Love is the better of the two Billie Holiday songs in the set, with the band in particularly fine form at the end. It Ain't Necessarily So sounds like Billie but it's Maxine Sullivan. It includes the great rhyming in the Jonah he lived in the whale line "he made his home in that fish's ab-do-men." The set includes Leadbelly's Gallis Pole which shows the roots of Richie Havens' frenetic guitar style. I love the way he says "jail-house." A contrasting guitar sound is provided by Lightnin' Hopkins' Guitar Lightnin'. A very fine instrumental with terrific pacing and feel.I wanted the set for Blind Willie McTell's Statesboro Blues. The Allman Brothers version is an all time favorite of mine, and listening to McTell's original made me appreciate both.Perhaps the best of the bunch is Memphis Minnie's opening cut, New Bumble Bee Blues. "He makes better honey any bumblebee I ever seen, and when he makes it lord how he makes me scream."The biggest flaw--no liner notes. None. Inexcusable in this kind of compilation."
Track Listings (18) - Disc #1