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without listening to what turned THEM on, get this as a great overview. If your exposure to the blues comes via England (Stones, Clapton, etc. etc). This has some of the great classic cuts in one CD: John Hurt ("Make me a pallet on your floor"), John Lee Hooker (Baby Don't Do Me Wrong), and Bobby Blue Bland's version of "St James Infirmary" are all fabulous.WARNING: If you don't already have most of these performers in your collection, you soon will. Many thanks to Putumayo World Music for putting this collection together.
bought it as a gift for my hubby, but I love it too.
If you like good old Delta blues.then you'll LOVE this CD. I have one and gave one as a gift and the entire family listened to it over Christmas and everyone loved it.
It is one of the collections put together by Putumayo, and includes a small bonus booklet inside the CD case giving a brief background of the musician/vocalists included - some are deceased, i.e., Luther Allison in 1997, Junior Wells in 1998, John Lee Hooker in 2001, and Memphis Minnie in 1963. This is another good CD I found at my friend Regina's shop, Art and Soul, in Vicksburg, MS (the south end of the Delta). It is a sampling of 11 vocalists, with various instrumental (guitar, harmonica, and/or keyboard with backup on drums, etc). I have it playing on my Windows media player as I write this. Playing time of the individual selections ranges from 2:23 (Bobby Bland) to 5:53 (Junior Wells).
But if I hear the calming voice of Mississippi John Hurt again - or the infectious energy of Tina Turner - then, I think, it will go on again. I still have a photo in my mind as a woman (near the flooded Canal Street) shoves her dead husband, whom she has bound on a door, through the water.
Of course "St. After hurricane Katrina has raged in this region the Sound of the Mississippi delta music became all the more precious.
What a music will arise now, after the dead bodies are "disposed of" with so few care. James Infirmary", the standard ballad for all New Orleans funerals, is represented.
It talks about the pain of a man who has seen his wife a last time: "so sweet, so cool, so fair, stretched out on a long white table" in the hospital. Only the music with this Mississippi feeling, no further newspaper report, will soothe me in such moments.
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