⬇️ MARTIN SCORSESE ⬇️
Presents:
Presents:
THE BLUES
COLLECTION (36 CD/DVD)
COLLECTION (36 CD/DVD)
REVIEW
This is by far the best and most comprehensive introduction to recorded
blues ever assembled, drawing styles, record labels, and eras together
with the efficiency of a spider’s web.
These five discs-tied to the hit-and-miss PBS film series Martin Scorsese
Presents the Blues-embrace field hollers, early queens Ma Rainey and
Bessie Smith, the music’s first composer W.C. Handy, Delta slide
guitarists, string bands, piano barrelhousers, jazz geniuses Count Basie
and Lionel Hampton, Texas hotshots, lyric poets Percy Mayfield and Willie
Dixon, Chicago powerhouses from Muddy Waters to Buddy Guy,
Howlin’ Wolf and howling white boys, soulkittens Etta James and Janis
Joplin, juke joint brawlers like Hound Dog Taylor, African torchbearer
Ali Farka Toure, modern guitar heroes Stevie Ray Vaughan and Luther
Allison, and even recent hit-makers Peggy Scott-Adams and Susan
Tedeschi. And that’s just a smidgen of the talents represented across
more than 100 cuts.
Nonetheless, there are grave omissions in disc five, which focuses on
contemporary blues. The raw electric sound of present-day Mississippi,
embodied by R.L. Burnside and other artists on the Fat Possum label, has
done much to open the ears of college-age audiences and should be
included. Also absent are the music’s most important contemporary
innovators: Afro-blues fusionist Corey Harris, psychedelic folk bluesman
Otis Taylor and rap-blues proselytizer Chris Thomas King. Still, it’s
obvious this collection is a work of devotion and intelligence as well
as commerce.
NEW!
MSPB-The Best of the Blues @FLAC
