Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar Classics 1926-1937 (1972)

1. Barbecue Bob - Atlanta Moan	3:03
2. Weaver & Beasley - Bottleneck Blues	2:55
3. Ruth Willis - Man Of My Own	2:57
4. Bukka White - The Panama Limited	3:07
5. Shreveport Home Wreckers - Fence Breakin' Rules	3:11
6. Robert Johnson - Milkcow's Calf Blues	2:22
7. The Black Ace - Black Ace		2:47
8. The Genial Hawaiians - St. Louis Blues	2:49
9. Irene Scruggs - My Back To The Wall	2:43
10. Kansas Joe - My Wash Woman's Gone	2:44		play
11. Oscar Woods - Evil Hearted Woman Blues	3:04
12. Bo Weavil Jackson - You Can't Keep No Brown	3:09
13. King Solomon Hill - Whoopie Blues	3:07
14. Ramblin' Thomas - So Lonesome	2:43			play

15.Kansas Joe McCoy - Pile Driver Blues	2:52

The only down side is that there are only 14 tracks - this is one of those Yazoo vinyl-to-CD transfers that suffer from this. But as usual with Yazoo, the sound quality is remarkably good for ancient scratchy old 78's. Otherwise, this is a super collection covering greats like Black Ace, Bo Weavil Jackson, King Solomon Hill, Sylvester Weaver, Fred McMullen, Ramblin' Thomas. If you love good blues slide and you haven't heard these names, then this CD is for you! Oh yeah, it does also have a few names like Robert Johnson & Memphis Minnie. Even if like me you have a lot of these tracks on other CDs, this is a good addition to the collection and one you can easily play from go to whoa without skipping a single track - usual Yazoo quality. I owned this before and had it stolen, had to get it again. Keep on slidin'! ---Steven R. Sims

Originating with the homemade, single-string instruments created by musicians from Mississippi and neighboring states, the slide style of guitar playing was particularly effective when applied to the developing blues. Employing open tunings, guitarists could gracefully blur notes for a quality not unlike the human voice. Consisting almost entirely of solo vocal/guitar numbers, Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar Classics: 1926-1937 excels in its portrait of the instrument's range in the hands of players like Barbecue Bob, Bukka White, King Solomon Hill, and Robert Johnson. Only four of Hill's six 78 sides had seen the light of day at the time of this release. On the basis of "Whoopee Blues" (and the superior "Gone Dead Train," not included), this is a sad fact. The performance is a killer both for the brilliance of Hill's penetrating falsetto and for his adept slide work. Bukka White's debut, "The Panama Limited," with its spoken verses (accompanied by train-like vamp) and sung choruses (mimicked by wonderfully distilled slide lines), sets the stage for many of his subsequent recordings.

A further highlight is provided by the exceptional husband and wife team of Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie on the biting slide performance "My Wash Woman's Gone." Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar Classics is of course only one version of the story: its selection, while excellent, doesn't provide the slide guitar primer one might expect. There are, for example, no selections by either Kokomo Arnold or Casey Bill Weldon. Rather, the collection feels like a Yazoo sampler that focuses on slide material. A minor qualm as the artists contained here are, for the most part, all formidable players, and almost every performance stands as a classic example of the style. ~ Nathan Bush

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