15 Classic Blues Songs from the 1920's Volume 1

 

Since I found out that Blues Images were discontinuing their calendar/CD series with the 2023 edition and they were getting rid of all of their old stock, I picked up all of the CD's that they released before I started collecting them. They were sold out of Volume One but were good enough to burn me a copy since I was buying the rest of the series. Nice people! Support them!

As with all of the subsequent releases, this is a terrific collection of early acoustic blues, starting with Blind Blakes humorous "He's in the Jailhouse Now", followed by Ramblin' Thomas' wonderful slide work on "No Job Blues", Skip James playing piano on his "22-20 Blues", Blind Lemon Jefferson's evocative ode to flood waters, "Rising High Water Blues", the legendary Charlie Patton's "Down the Dirt Road Blues", great guitar work from Blind Willie McTell in "Death Cell Blues", Bumble Bee Slim's "Rough Rugged Road" is, appropriately I suppose, a bit scratchy, but is a wonderful rendition with great playing, the incredible Son House is amazing on "Dry Spell Blues", Blind Blake again impresses in "Bad Feeling Blues", The Beale Street Sheiks' "Beale Town Bound" obviously influenced a number of other songs - or vice versa! - then Blind Lemon Jefferson performs his classic "Black Snake Dream Blues", followed by Ma Rainey in her sultry, alcoholic "Dead Drunk Blues", Tommy Johnson actually semi-yodels in a mournful way in "I Want Someone To Love Me", there's more fine slide guitar work in Blind Joe Reynolds low-fi "Cold Woman Blue" and the set finishes off with King Solomon Hill and his great guitar playing in the somewhat haunting "Time Has Done Got Hard".

I absolutely love the excellent blues tunes from this era - they are so full of passion, the playing is generally superior and while the sound quality can sometimes be iffy due to the technology of the day, these performances are hard to beat! Grab these collections while you can from bluesimages.com!