Track Listing

1. I'm Insane [From Peewee Get My Gun] - T-Model Ford
2. Meet Me in the City [From All Night Long] - Junior Kimbrough
3. Come Right In [From 20 Miles] - 20 Miles
4. Snake Drive [From Mr. Wizard] - R.L. Burnside
5. Crack Whore Blues [From Souls on Fire] - The Neckbones
6. Lonesome Road [From Most Things Haven't Worked Out] - Junior Kimbrough
7. Have Mercy Baby [From Off Yonder Wall] - The Jelly Roll Kings
8. Come on In [Live][#] - R.L. Burnside
9. Been Here and Gone [From Takes One to Know One] - Elmo Williams
10. Little Eddie Blues [From Robert Cage Can See What You're Doing] - Robert Cage
11. Your Memories [From What the Hell Was I Thinking] - Hasil Adkins

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48396 in Music
• Released on: 1998-02-24
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Not your father's blues
I bought this CD from Amazon because it was shockingly inexpensive and I wanted to pad out an order. I wasn't expecting great things; I hoped merely that I hadn't wasted the meager amount of money I'd spend. Boy, was I happy when I finally played this. This is great!

The blues. A genre which can communicate untold pain, depthless heartache and a universe of suffering. Or it can encompass songs like "Crack Whore Blues", which is exactly what you would expect it to be from the title. The tracks on here are vibrant and alive. This is wonderfully thrilling, foot-tapping stuff that can be serious on the few occasions that it wants to be.

Since this is a sampler compilation containing disparate artists, it's difficult to sum up this album in a few paragraphs. We go all the way from rompy throwaway musical jokes right into genuinely soulful lyrics. But the one constant is quality. What many of the performers lack in technical ability, they more than make up for in enthusiasm. This is a release from a tiny record label with no terribly big names, which goes a long way towards explaining the emotion.

The liner notes are absolutely hideous -- green text written on a purple background. It makes my eyes water just thinking about it. There's also a funny gag on the back, which I shall not spoil here.

As a sampler, the idea is to throw as much onto the disc as possible and hope that the customer likes at least one or two selections enough to purchase a full album. They've convinced me; I have some shopping to do. Anyone with even a passing interest in the blues should pick up this one. You can do it without breaking the bank, and, unless you're familiar with the artists already, you'll be hearing the blues like you haven't quite heard them before.

Meet The Resurrection Of The Blues - Cheap!
Fat Possum - pace the first guest reviewer - isn't the band, it's the label, which houses perhaps the most important bluesmen to have emerged in the art in an extremely long time. Mostly from north Mississippi, all of whom have at least the attitude and the drive of that region's weave between hypnotic and heartpunch soul dance blues. If you've happened upon any of these artists's discs and been tempted but leery to try them, pick up this cheap sampler, listen closely, and be prepared to learn all over again that the blues didn't begin and end with a certain long tall Texan who couldn't make up his mind whether he wanted to be Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Albert King, or all the above when he grew up. Nor does it belong exclusively (if at all) to a trio of hotshot young shredders using the blues as a launching pad for continuing wild, techincally brilliant, musically wanting guitar pyrotechnics. At long last there are some who remember what the blues is REALLY all about, and they mostly take the form of these aging gentlemen (some of whom hadn't recorded until they'd hit their 60s, at least) to show how it can be done. Make that, how it should be done - raw, rippling, deep, and exuberantly soulful. This is the best bargain in music in years.

Nicely off-mainline
I'm a fan of Mr. Burnside, so getting this was easy, and enjoying it easier even. This is not revolutionary music by any means, but it is refreshingly wild and iconoclastic. Get it, it is fun