Blues — Recently Added

Smoking early work from the legendary Freddie King – most of it recorded during years he had a strong connection to the Chicago electric blues scene, where he really honed his craft to perfection! The work here is definitely blues, but King's vocals bring a soulful inflection to the songs ... CD

Beautiful late work from Lonnie Johnson – recorded decades after his bigger years on record, but handled with great care by Prestige Records, during the brief run of its Bluesville imprint! Like most of the rest of the sides at the time, the approach here is to make an older mode live again ... CD

The title might seem a bit all-encompassing – but given the talents of the mighty Ralph Peer, it certainly fits! Peer was one of the most pioneering figures in the early days of the recording industry – a talent scout who would endlessly search the country, especially the south, for ... CD

Deep-burning Chicago blues from Corey Dennison – one of the few contemporary players who can still hold onto the electric fire from that moment when the Windy City scene first broke wide to much larger national appeal! Corey sings with a full, raspy style – and augments his lyrics with ... CD

Exactly the kind of a record to show why Skip James was really a cut above most of his contemporaries – a bluesman who works here with a sense of darkness and foreboding that really sets a chill to most of his tunes! There's less of the usual short-term sadness and smaller complaints of ... LP, Vinyl record album

Amazing blues from the Georgia scene of the 70s – music that hardly feels like other versions of the genre coming out at the time – partly thanks to the raw recording quality of these tracks! Most of the music features just a singer and guitar – sometimes just one or the other ... LP, Vinyl record album

The first ever recordings of Mississippi Fred McDowell – the legendary Alan Lomax Recordings – recorded in Como, Mississippi in September of 1959! It includes songs that would be part of his canon for the rest of his career, mostly just his voice and guitar in raw, beautiful, soul-shaki ... LP, Vinyl record album

The incredible mid 60s album from blues singer and harp blower Junior Wells and his Chicago Blues Band with Buddy Guy! This is a most pivotal set in which Junior & his players don't sound as if they're trying to imbue blues tradition with urban grit and electricity – it simply seems to ... LP, Vinyl record album

Strong sounds from the young Clifton Chenier – one of the first great voices in zydeco grooves in the postwar years! Yet the music here isn't the pandered-out zydeco of later years – when it was almost to the Louisiana scene what Chicago blues had become to the tourists in the Windy ... CD

They're not lying with the title of this one – as the set's a killer collection of rural blues, with a legacy that goes way beyond the glory days of the genre in the 20s and 30s! The collection's a great one from Mississippi – exactly the kind of pre-LP material that the label's been ... LP, Vinyl record album

Timeless blues work from Boyd Rivers – played on both acoustic and electric guitar, but with a classic spirit that stretches back to the days of the delta! The recordings are from the early 90s, but done in a way that feels like they're from decades before – clear enough to bring out ... LP, Vinyl record album

Classic blues from Lightnin Hopkins – a set that's far rootsier than you might expect from the "electric show" in the title! Hopkins plays mostly acoustic guitar here – and sings with very spare backing overall – just a bit of keyboards, bass, and drums, plus some ... LP, Vinyl record album

An incredible record from Mississippi Fred McDowell – a set that was issued on a big label, but which has a wonderfully rootsy feel throughout – in a way that almost out-does any work from the indie blues labels of the time! The package was put together by Tommy Couch as an early ... LP, Vinyl record album

Caribbean voodoo hits the American scene – served up here in a host of different mid-century styles – from jazz, to blues, to R&B – with some other nice surprises in between! The voodoo component of the tracks comes through either in the subject matter, or in the rhythmic ... CD

There's nobody like Bobby Blue Bland on Duke Records – especially during the early years that are featured on this collection! Bland came out of Memphis with a very unique, really amazing sound right from the start – an approach to blues that was a lot more sophisticated than most of ... CD

The title definitely gets it right – as this 70s collection brings together most of the best Chess Records material by Howlin Wolf from the late 50s and early 60s – almost all of them small combo sides that present the man in all of his raspy, growling glory! The tracks span a space ... LP, Vinyl record album

Houston Stackhouse has some great "friends" here – drummer James Peck Curtis and guitarist Robert Nighthawk – who step into these classic sessions from George Mitchell, and give them a bit more punch than the rest! The tracks were recorded in Mississippi, as part of Mitchell's ... LP, Vinyl record album

They got the title right on this one – and the album's a smoking batch of tunes that captures Freddie in all his guitar-driven glory! The set features Freddie working with a tight Atlantic studio group that includes King Curtis, David Newman, James Booker, and Billy Butler – but the ... LP, Vinyl record album

Rough and raw work from Big Bill Broonzy – well-done sides that feature Bill on vocals and acoustic guitar, recorded in Paris in the early 50s, and issued here in a US package on the Scepter label! There's a pretty earthy feel to most of the tracks – a real "crossroads" feel ... LP, Vinyl record album

A Chicago blues gem – and some of the rarest material issued by King Records in the 60s – very gritty, earthy blues from singer Smokey Smothers – who gets plenty of help in the studio from a young Freddy King! Smothers has this raspy, almost casual style of singing – one ... CD