As much as we enjoy listening to the new blues music being released, occasionally we just have to go back and remind ourselves of some of the classic blues that helped to get the genre to where it is today. The 2003 CD collection Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings has long been a terrific way to do that, but now, for the first time, the 26-track collection has been reissued on vinyl, and it of course has never sounded better.
Admittedly, some of the songs on this collection–which has been one of the label’s best-selling titles–aren’t exactly the most relatable these days, talking about such things as a “Nickel’s Worth of Liver”, “boll weevil here, boll weevil there, boll weevil everywhere”, or “ridin’ along on my old mule” (or even in a slightly more modern Mercury ’49). But that doesn’t make these songs–some of which, after all, were recorded now more than 80 years ago–any less entertaining, with the humorous, folksy “Mule-Ridin’ Blues” referenced above from Big Bill Broonzy, for instance, being a good example of the part-spoken, part-sung style of song, something we also hear on numbers from Vera Hall (“Black Woman”)–whose voice some may recognize as having been sampled by Moby on his 1999 hit “Natural Blues”–and Lightnin’ Hopkins (“Come Go Home with Me”, recorded in 1959 in Hopkins’ Houston home). Although the songs here span a full half-century in their recording dates, the most recent of the numbers (the expressive guitar instrumental “One Dime Blues” from Etta Baker) was still recorded more than a third of a century ago, during a 1992 performance at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia.
It’s difficult to point to what we appreciate most about this set. The instrumentals, including the aforementioned from Baker, are each quite superb, also offering a rollicking “Joggie Boogie” with some terrific playing from both Memphis Slim on piano and Willie Dixon on bass, as well as a “Vastapol” that features the quiet, delicate guitar of Elizabeth Cotten. Of the vocal numbers, “Pony Blues” from David “Honeyboy” Edwards and “Don’t Leave Me Here” from Big Joe Williams probably stand out the most, with the many other highlights of the collection including songs from such greats as Roosevelt Sykes (the lively barrelhouse piano-style “Ran the Blues Out of My Window”), Lead Belly (the slow, suffering “Leaving Blues”), Pink Anderson (“Boll Weevil”, recorded by Samuel Charters in the safety of Anderson’s living room in 1961), Henry Townsend (with the crisp vocals and guitar of “I Asked Her If She Loved Me”), Lonnie Johnson (“Drifting Along Blues”), and The Chambers Brothers (the grungy Chicago blues of “Oh Baby, You Don’t Have To Go”), not to mention second performances from Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon with “Beer Drinking Woman” and Lead Belly (this time on 12-string guitar with Josh White on lead vocals and guitar) on the closing “Don’t Lie Buddy”, as well as multiple songs from Brownie McGhee (a breezy “Rising Sun” with Sonny Terry on harmonica, with the popular duo also opening the collection with a shuffling “Old Jabo”).
While those names are all likely somewhat known to folks familiar with classic blues, the set also includes numbers from several more obscure artists, including K.C. Douglas (who briefly played with Tommy Johnson) singing about those “Mercury Blues”, Cat Iron (“Jimmy Bell”) and Edith North Johnson and Henry Brown (“Nickel’s Worth of Liver”, one of several field recordings in the collection, this one obtained by Samuel Charters in 1961, while a 1942 field recording of Son House performing “County Farm Blues” was captured by Alan Lomax and John Work for the Library of Congress).
Tracks from Little Brother Montgomery, Champion Jack Dupree, Reverend Gary Davis, and Josh White round out the set, which, if you haven’t gathered by now, is well worth picking up on vinyl even if you’ve already got it and played it many times on CD!