Track Listing

1. Big Road Blues - Tommy Johnson
2. Cool Drink of Water Blues [*] - Tommy Johnson
3. Rattlesnake Blues - Charley Patton
4. Future Blues - Willie Brown
5. On the Wall [*] - Louise Johnson
6. Mississippi Jail House Groan [*] - Rube Lacey
7. Preachin' the Blues, Pt. I & II - Son House
8. Cross Road Blues - Robert Johnson
9. Catfish Blues - Robert Petway
10. I Feel Like Going Home - Muddy Waters
11. Dark Road - Floyd Jones
12. Eyesight to the Blind - Sonny Boy Williamson
13. Sitting on Top of the World - Howlin' Wolf
14. Goin' Down to Eli's (A.K.A. I'm Gonna Murder My Baby) - Robert McCollum
15. I Believe - Elmore James
16. Something Inside Me [*] - Elmore James
17. Sweet Little Angel - B.B. King
18. Crosscut Saw - Albert King

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46222 in Music
• Released on: 1993-02-16
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Weird and Wonderful
Any Mississippi Delta Blues fan would have an awful time picking just 15 representative entries. This album does a great job, falling just short by including too much new material - by new, I mean after 1940. Still, you can't argue with Robert Johnson's "Crossroad Blues" or even Robert Nighthawk's superlative "Going Down to Eli's." This captures the individuality, roughness, and anti-spritiuality of Delta Blues really well and a couple of non-obvious inclusions like Robert Petway's Catfish Blues make it a good catch. Of the Blues Master Series, this is one of my favorites.

****1/2 - one of the best in the series
Not five straight stars, though...partly because the authentic Mississippi Delta stuff is interspersed with much more urban sounds from B.B. King and Albert King. And (very) electric Chicago-sides by Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, and Robert Nighthawk do much to blur the distinctiveness of this package.

But there's nothing wrong with the music itself. Delta legends Charley Patton, Robert Johnson and Son House are here, doing "Rattlesnake Blues", the eerie "Crossroads Blues" and the harsh "Preachin' The Blues" respectively. Muddy Waters' late-40s single "I Feel Like Going Home" is one of his finest early songs. And the awesome (and sadly underrated) Tommy Johnson is represented by two of his best and most impressive songs, "Big Road Blues" and "Cool Drink Of Water Blues" (the basis for Howlin' Wolf's "I Asked For Water").

The fidelity on the oldest recordings, particularly by House and Patton, is below par, obviously, but that's the case with every reissue of this material, not just this one.
The annotation is very good, as always with this series, and there are a few relatively obscure songs here which should please blues lovers (although seasoned blues listeners probably have most of this material already): "On The Wall", an energetic piano blues by Charley Patton-associate Louise Johnson, the acoustic "Catfish Blues" by Robert Petway, Rube Lacey's moody "Mississippi Jail House Groan", and Willie Brown's sandpapery rendition of the raw, Son House-like "Future Blues".

The newer material includes slide guitar master Robert Nighthawk's gritty "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby", and great songs by Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson II. And the inclusion of the underrated and underrecorded Floyd Jones' "Dark Road" (another reworking of Johnson's "Big Road Blues") is an additional treat.

A great collection of music. Not the definitive word on Delta blues, obviously, and some of these songs, excellent as they are, have no business being on a compilation of "Mississippi Delta Blues". But still...great music.

Good Compilation, Two by Tommy Johnson
Still one of the best intro CDs to the blues. I'm knocked out by Tommy Johnson; he's the first two selections here. Charley Patton, but hey - what about that pivotal Willie Brown doing "Future Blues"? The liner notes are not circumspect in describing Louise Johnson's "performance" on "On the Wall". Another treat is two by Elmore James - 'specially "Something Inside Me" which floats along like Jimi Hendrix.
I never tire of this compilation.