Track Listing

1. Jimmy Yancey - How Long Blues
2. The Boogie Woogie Boys Boogie - Boogie Woogie Prayer, Pt.1
3. Count Basie And His Orchestra - How Long Blues
4. Johnny Moore's Three Blazers - Driftin' Blues
5. Fats Domino - The Fat Man
6. Art Tatum - Tatum Pole Boogie
7. Professor Longhair - Tipitina
8. Ray Charles - What'd I Say, Parts 1 & 2
9. Otis Span - Good Morning Mr. Blues
10. Duke Ellington, Charles Mongus & Max Roach - Backward Country Boy Blues
11. Thelonious Monk - Blue Monk
12. Big Joe Turner & Jay McShann & Dave Brubeck - Mission Ranch Blues
13. Joe Turner - The Ladder
14. Dr. John - Honey Dripper
15. Henry Townsend - World Full of People
16. Dr. John - Big Chief
17. Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins & Marcia Ball - Carmel Blues
18. Dr. John, Pete Jolly & Henry Gray - How Long Blues

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82309 in Music
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2003-09-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Album Description
This soundtrack is one in a series (Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues) featuring original recordings and blues classics hand picked by the director Clint Eastwood. 20 tracks from the likes of Pine Top Smith, Leroy Carr, Dr. John, Art Tatum, Professor Longhair. Sony. 2003.

Customer Reviews

This Is Not the Soundtrack
While this is a fine album, it is not the soundtrack of the TV show. On the show, Dave Brubeck played a breath-taking blues about twenty minutes into the program. Marcia Ball played an incredible solo piano and vocal of Red Beans. Duke Ellington was featured on tape playing a rousing CJam Blues with Mingus and Roach. These artists are on the CD, but NOT playing what we saw and heard. I bought the CD because of them and feel a little cheated. If they were to re-release this album with the original soundtrack numbers, it would be a major improvement.

Piano Blues - A Film by Clint Eastwood
This wonderful CD was just released and is a companion to the PBS series airing in September. A powerful collection of blues pianists that will satisfy every taste. Jimmy Yancey, Thelonius Monk, Art Tatum, Otis Spann, Big Joe Turner, A. Ammons round out an all-star cast of boogie, stride, left and right hand romps and just plain ole good-time piano. Piano lovers - Take Note!

A bit of a misnomer
"Piano blues"? Hm, yes, and some jazz and R&B and a little bit of soul.

Most of this is fine music, no doubt about that, but it's not a very good overview of piano blues. Mac Rebennack (Dr John) is a fine R&B pianist, but he is not a bluesman, and neither are Ray Charles or Fats Domino or Thelonious Monk or even the great Count Basie.
And even though the juxtaposing of Jimmy Yancey's primitive version of "How Long Blues" against the harmonically sophisticated reading of the song by Count Basie and his orchestra is interesting in principle, the song was written and composed by one of the best blues pianists of all time, the great Leroy Carr. Why isn't his original version here?

As I said, good music, but a pretty bad overview of piano blues. You can't really take a collection of piano-based blues music seriously when it doesn't include a single track by Memphis Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Maceo Merriweather, Sunnyland Slim, or "Champion" Jack Dupree. And Lafayette Leake's superb instrumental "Slow Leake" would have been a perfect addition - why isn't it here?

If you are already an experienced blues fan, this CD does provide an interesting insight into how the blues has permeated soul, jazz and R&B, but for a relative newcomer, "Piano Blues" doesn't cut it. It fails to introduce the listener to some of the best and most influential blues pianists of the past hundred years.