1 	Baby What You Want Me To Do 	2:26
2 	Found Love 	2:18
3 	Meet Me 	2:50
4 	I Was So Wrong 	3:11
5 	Going By The River, Part 2 	2:04
6 	Big Boss Man	2:48
7 	Hush Hush 	2:37
8 	Where Can You Be 	2:35
9 	I'm Nervous 	2:37
10 	Going By The River, Part 1 	2:03
11 	I Ain't Got You	2:18
12 	Come Love	2:31

Lee Baker 	Guitar
Lefty Bates 	Guitar
W.C. Dalton 	Guitar
Willie Dixon 	Bass
Henry Gray 	Piano
Marcus "Benjy" Johnson 	Bass
Earl Phillips 	Drums
Milton Rector 	Bass
Jimmy Reed 	Guitar, Harmonica, Primary Artist, Vocals
Eddie Taylor 	Guitar
Phil Upchurch 	Bass 

There isn't a bad track on Found Love. Not only are some of Jimmy Reed's biggest hits included -- "Baby What You Want Me to Do," "Big Boss Man," and "Hush Hush" -- but the title track is particularly notable, as it contains a one-note harp wail that proves to be vibrant, heartfelt, and timeless. As with most of Reed's albums of this period -- and most blues albums of this era -- the album contains material from across over a year's worth of sessions, from the spring of 1959 through the summer of 1960, with one track ("I Ain't Got You") pulled from a 1955 session. Eddie Taylor is playing a lot of the lead guitar, but Lefty Bates is also heard on many of the cuts, and Willie Dixon, no less, is playing bass on "Meet Me," "Big Boss Man," and "Come Love." Earl Phillips is responsible for all of the drumming, and Mary Lee "Mama" Reed is heard on the backing vocals of "Baby What You Want Me to Do." Reed's catalog has seen numerous reissues of varying quality across the decades, but the Collectables label did an admirable job in 2000, reissuing both Reed's library and that of John Lee Hooker from the same label with great sound quality and original packaging at a budget price. [Koch re-released Found Love in 2000 and added four bonus tracks.] ---Al Campbell, AllMusic Review

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1 	You Don't Have To Go 	3:04
2 	I Ain't Got You 	2:17
3 	Can't Stand To See You 	2:46
4 	You Got Me Dizzy 	2:46
5 	Honest I Do 	2:40
6 	Down In Virginia 	2:24
7 	Too Much 	2:21
8 	I'm Gonna Get My Baby 	2:38
9 	I Wanne Be Loved 	2:12
10 	Baby, What You Want Me To Do? 	2:20
11 	Hush Hush 	2:27
12 	Big Boss Man 	2:45
13 	Bright Lights, Big City 	2:39
14 	Down The Road 	2:33
15 	I'm Going Upside Your Head 	2:54
16 	Shame, Shame, Shame 	2:47
17 	Take Out Some Insurance 	2:17
18 	Found Love 	2:17

Bass – Curtis Mayfield (tracks: 14), Eddie Taylor (tracks: 15), Marcus Johnson (tracks: 10),
 Milton Rector (tracks: 2), Phil Upchurch (tracks: 7, 11, 14), Willie Dixon (tracks: 12)
Drums – Al Duncan (tracks: 7, 16), Earl Phillips (tracks: 2, 4 to 6, 8 to 14, 17, 18),
 Morris Wilkerson (tracks: 1), Vernell Fournier (tracks: 3)
Guitar – Eddie Taylor (tracks: 1, 3 to 6, 8 to 11, 17, 18), Hubert Sumlin (tracks: 15), Lee Baker (tracks: 12),
 Lefty Bates (tracks: 7, 10, 12 to 14, 16 to 18), Remo Biondi (tracks: 5, 8, 9), W.C. Dalton (tracks: 2)
Guitar, Vocals – Jimmy Reed
Piano – Henry Gray (tracks: 2), Johnny Jones (tracks: 15)
Vocals – Mama Reed (tracks: 7, 12, 13)

Jimmy Reed (Mathis James Reed) was born on September 6, 1925, in Dunleith, Mississippi. He was a blues singer and songwriter who played the guitar and harmonica. When he sang, he would slur his words. He produced a series of hits in the 50’s that made him the most successful blues singer of the era. Reed sang in church and played the guitar with his friend Eddie Taylor. He left school in 1939 in search of work. He found a job farming around Duncan and Meltonia, Mississippi.

However, between 1943 and 1944 he left the south to head to Chicago to find a job because there were more job opportunities available there due to the war. He was drafted into U.S. Navy while there. In 1945 he was discharged and returned home to Mississippi briefly before once more traveling to the Chicago area. While working in the steel mills, Reed spent his leisure time with a friend named Willie Joe Duncan, who played the one-string guitar, or Diddley-bow. He also re-established contact with Eddie Taylor, who had moved north to try his luck. The two played together; Reed on guitar, harp, and vocals, and Taylor on guitar.

Jimmy finally got the break he had been hoping for in 1953 when he secured a recording contract with VeeJay Records. Finally, he got his first hit in 1955 called “You Don’t Have To Go.” From then on, his success was incredible. “You Don’t Have to Go,” was followed by “Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby,” “You Got Me Dizzy,” “Honest I Do,” “Baby What Do You Want Me to Do,” “Big Boss Man,” and “Bright Lights, Big City.” Much of his success can be credited to his friend Eddie Taylor, who played on most of his sessions, and his wife, Mama Reed, who wrote many of his songs and even sat behind him in the studio reciting his lyrics into his forgetful ear as he sang. His hits appealed to blacks and whites. Many of his blues songs were even adopted by white R&B groups during the early 60’s. He was the first of the Chicago electric bluesmen to break through to the pop/rock market. Reed had fourteen hits for Vee Jay on the R&B charts between 1955 and 1966.

Reed was an epileptic and this fact, plus his fascination for the bottle, constantly undermined his work. In the early 60’s he visited Europe, but it was obvious that he was not well. Reed often appeared on stage drunk. Jimmy Reed died on August 29, 1976, in Oakland, California, after suffering an epileptic seizure at age 51. He was buried in Chicago. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. Steve Miller, The Rolling Stones, Pretty Things, and Grateful Dead acknowledge a considerable debt to him. Jimmy Reed was an important figure who influenced many artists. ---Jackie Myers, mswritersandmusicians.com

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A1 	Honest I Do 	
A2 	Go On To School 	
A3 	My First Plea 	
A4 	Boogie In The Dark 	
A5 	You Got Me Crying 	
A6 	Ain't That Lovin' You Baby 	
B1 	You Got Me Dizzy 	
B2 	Little Rain 	
B3 	Can't Stand To See You Go 	
B4 	Roll And Rhumba 	
B5 	You're Something Else 	
B6 	You Don't Have To Go

Jimmy Reed - Composer, Guitar, Harmonica, Primary Artist, Vocals
Remo Biondi - Guitar
John Brim - Guitar
W.C. Dalton - Guitar
Vernel Fournier - Drums
Henry Gray - Piano
Albert King - Drums
Earl Phillips - Drums
Milton Rector - Bass
Eddie Taylor - Guitar
Morris Wilkerson - Drums 

In deciding where to start listening to Jimmy Reed, the man and his record label made it easy -- at the beginning. His debut LP release, I'm Jimmy Reed, was about as strong a first album as was heard in Chicago blues, but also no stronger (relatively speaking) than the first long-players issued of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and co. As was the case with most bluesmen of his generation, Reed's debut LP was really a collection of single sides than an actual album of new material (though some of it did hail from its year of release), consisting of tracks he'd recorded from June 1953 ("Roll & Rhumba") through March 1958 ("You Got Me Crying" etc.). So it's no surprise that it rivals The Best of Muddy Waters or any of the other 12" platters that were showing up from Reed's rivals at the end of the 1950s -- most of the blues labels put together their LPs the same way at first. But that also turns I'm Jimmy Reed into a treasure-trove of prime material from his repertory, including the songs on which he'd built his reputation over the previous five years, key among them "Honest I Do," "Ain't That Lovin' You Baby," "You Got Me Dizzy," and "You Don't Have to Go," plus their highly relevant B-sides, which help give this album more depth and breadth than a formal hits collection would have had. And in addition to Reed's singing and harp work, the album is also a superb showcase for guitarists Eddie Taylor and John Brim (the latter on the earliest material here), and drummer Earl Phillips. ---Bruce Eder, AllMusic Review

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01. World's Got A Problem
02. I Don't Know (Part.1)
03. I Don't Know (Part.2)
04. Got To Be A Reason
05. Take Out Some Insurance
06. I Don't Believe In Nothing
07. If You Want It Done Right
08. Life Won't Last Me Long
09. Turn Me On
10. Got Me Worried
11. I Ain't From Chicago

Jimmy Reed - Vocals, Guitar & Harmonica 
William 'Lefty' Bates - Guitar
Eddie Taylor - Guitar & Bass
Wayne Bennett  -  Guitar
Jimmy Reed Jr. - Guitar
Jimmy Gresham - Bass
Phil Upchurch - Bass
Al Duncan - Drums
Jimmy Tillman  -  Drums

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1. Bright Lights Big City
2. I’m Mr. Luck
3. What’s Wrong, Baby
4. Found Joy
5. Kind Of Lonesome
6. Aw Shucks, Hush Your Mouth
7. Tell Me You Love Me
8. Blue Carnegie
9. I’m A Love You
10. Hold Me Close
11. Blue Blue Water
12. Baby What You Want Me To Do
13. You Don't Have To Go
14. Hush-Hush
15. Found Love
16. Honest I Do
17. You Got Me Dizzy
18. Big Boss Man
19. Take Out Some Insurance
20. Boogie In The Dark
21. Going To New York
22. Ain’t That Lovin’ You, Baby
23. The Sun Is Shining

    Lefty Bates – guitar
    Lonnie Brooks – guitar
    Willie Dixon – bass
    Earl Phillips – drums
    Jimmy Reed – guitar, harmonica, vocals
    Mary Reed – backing vocals
    Eddie Taylor – guitar
    Phil Upchurch – guitar

In several respects, this is a very strange album, though the music isn't strange at all and is in fact quite typical vintage Jimmy Reed. First, despite what the title might lead you to believe, this is not a live recording; all 23 of the tracks were done in the studio. Not only that, they weren't even performed at New York's famed venue Carnegie Hall, although producer Calvin Carter would later claim they were; instead, everything was cut elsewhere. According to Pete Welding's notes to the record in the year (1961) the double LP was first issued, one-half is devoted to "recreations of some of Jimmy's most celebrated and biggest-selling recordings," while "the second LP here is Jimmy's celebratory recreation of his highly successful appearance at august Carnegie Hall this past May." Even that doesn't really clear up things, however, as it certainly seems as if in many if not all cases where songs were previously issued by Vee Jay on other Reed releases, the versions used here are identical. It seems like a lot of trouble to go to for creating an album that, to be blunt, is pretty deceptively titled and packaged. For all that, however, the music is pretty good, if not exactly essential given that there are more legitimately packaged and logically assembled Jimmy Reed best-ofs. In some ways, it almost does make for a greatest-hits compilation, as it contains most of Reed's most popular tunes -- "Bright Lights, Big City," "Big Boss Man," "Honest I Do," "Hush Hush," "Ain't That Lovin' You Baby," "Going to New York," "Take Out Some Insurance," "You Don't Have to Go," "Baby, Want You Want Me to Do" -- though his one big post-1961 hit, "Shame Shame Shame," isn't here. The other songs here don't quite measure up to the standards of the aforementioned tunes, and though Reed's performances of these are reliably consistent, the sometimes criticized similarity of his material also makes them kind of monotonous when heard in such bulk and proximity. If this were the only Reed anthology in existence, though, it would serve as a pretty good overview of his highly accessible brand of R&B/blues. And as it was the best such thing available at its time of release, it was highly popular and influential, making the Top 50 at a time when few blues LPs charted. --- Richie Unterberger, allmusic.com

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1 	I Found My Baby 	
2 	You Don't Have To Go 	
3 	I'm Gonna Ruin You 	
4 	She Don't Go For That 	
5 	I Don't Go For That 	
6 	Ain't That Lovin' You Baby 	
7 	Can't Stand To See You Go 	
8 	I Love You Baby 	
9 	You Got Me Dizzy 	
10 	Honey, Where You Going 	
11 	Do The Thing 	
12 	Little Rain 	
13 	The Sun Is Shining 	
14 	Odds And Ends 	
15 	Honest I Do 	
16 	My Bitter Seed 	
17 	The Moon Is Rising 	
18 	Down In Virginia 	
19 	I'm Gonna Get My Baby 	
20 	I Wanna Be Loved 	
21 	I Told You Baby 	
22 	Take Out Some Insurance 	
23 	Baby, What You Want Me To Do 	
24 	Hush-Hush 	
25 	Found Love 	
26 	Come Love 	
27 	Big Boss Man 	
28 	Close Together 	
29 	Tell Me You Love Me 	
30 	Bright Lights, Big City 	
31 	Baby, What's Wrong 	
32 	Aw Shucks, Hush Your Mouth 	
33 	Good Lover 	
34 	Too Much 	
35 	I'll Change My Style 	
36 	Let's Get Together 	
37 	Shame, Shame, Shame 	
38 	When You're Doing All Right 	
39 	I'm Going Upside Your Head 	
40 	I'm The Man Down There

There's simply no sound in the blues as easily digestible, accessible, instantly recognizable, and as easy to play and sing as the music of Jimmy Reed. His best-known songs -- "Baby, What You Want Me to Do," "Bright Lights, Big City," "Honest I Do," "You Don't Have to Go," "Going to New York," "Ain't That Lovin' You Baby," and "Big Boss Man" -- have become such an integral part of the standard blues repertoire, it's almost as if they have existed forever. Because his style was simple and easily imitated, his songs were accessible to just about everyone from high-school garage bands having a go at it, to Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich, Lou Rawls, Hank Williams, Jr., and the Rolling Stones, making him -- in the long run -- perhaps the most influential bluesman of all. His bottom-string boogie rhythm guitar patterns (all furnished by boyhood friend and longtime musical partner Eddie Taylor), simple two-string turnarounds, country-ish harmonica solos (all played in a neck-rack attachment hung around his neck), and mush-mouthed vocals were probably the first exposure most white folks had to the blues. And his music -- lazy, loping, and insistent and constantly built and reconstructed single after single on the same sturdy frame -- was a formula that proved to be enormously successful and influential, both with middle-aged blacks and young white audiences for a good dozen years. Jimmy Reed records hit the R&B charts with amazing frequency and crossed over onto the pop charts on many occasions, a rare feat for an unreconstructed bluesman. This is all the more amazing simply because Reed's music was nothing special on the surface; he possessed absolutely no technical expertise on either of his chosen instruments and his vocals certainly lacked the fierce declamatory intensity of a Howlin' Wolf or a Muddy Waters. But it was exactly that lack of in-your-face musical confrontation that made Jimmy Reed a welcome addition to everybody's record collection back in the '50s and '60s. And for those aspiring musicians who wanted to give the blues a try, either vocally or instrumentally (no matter what skin color you were born with), perhaps Billy Vera said it best in his liner notes to a Reed greatest-hits anthology: "Yes, anybody with a range of more than six notes could sing Jimmy's tunes and play them the first day Mom and Dad brought home that first guitar from Sears & Roebuck. I guess Jimmy could be termed the '50s punk bluesman."

Reed was born on September 6, 1925, on a plantation in or around the small burg of Dunleith, MS. He stayed around the area until he was 15, learning the basic rudiments of harmonica and guitar from his buddy Eddie Taylor, who was then making a name for himself as a semi-pro musician, working country suppers and juke joints. Reed moved up to Chicago in 1943, but was quickly drafted into the Navy where he served for two years. After a quick trip back to Mississippi and marriage to his beloved wife Mary (known to blues fans as "Mama Reed"), he relocated to Gary, IN, and found work at an Armour Foods meat packing plant while simultaneously breaking into the burgeoning blues scene around Gary and neighboring Chicago. The early '50s found him working as a sideman with John Brim's Gary Kings (that's Reed blowing harp on Brim's classic "Tough Times" and its instrumental flipside, "Gary Stomp") and playing on the street for tips with Willie Joe Duncan, a shadowy figure who played an amplified, homemade one-string instrument called a Unitar. After failing an audition with Chess Records (his later chart success would be a constant thorn in the side of the firm), Brim's drummer at the time -- improbably enough, future blues guitar legend Albert King -- brought him over to the newly formed Vee-Jay Records, where his first recordings were made. It was during this time that he was reunited and started playing again with Eddie Taylor, a musical partnership that would last off and on until Reed's death. Success was slow in coming, but when his third single, "You Don't Have to Go" backed with "Boogie in the Dark," made the number five slot on Billboard's R&B charts, the hits pretty much kept on coming for the next decade.

But if selling more records than Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, or Little Walter brought the rewards of fame to his doorstep, no one was more ill-equipped to handle them than Jimmy Reed. With signing his name for fans being the total sum of his literacy, combined with a back-breaking road schedule once he became a name attraction and his self-description as a "liquor glutter," Reed started to fall apart like a cheap suit almost immediately. His devious schemes to tend to his alcoholism -- and the just plain aberrant behavior that came as a result of it -- quickly made him the laughingstock of his show-business contemporaries. Those who shared the bill with him in top-of-the-line R&B venues like the Apollo Theater -- where the story of him urinating on a star performer's dress in the wings has been repeated verbatim by more than one old-timer -- still shake their heads and wonder how Reed could actually stand up straight and perform, much less hold the audience in the palm of his hand. Other stories of Reed being "arrested" and thrown into a Chicago drunk tank the night before a recording session also reverberate throughout the blues community to this day. Little wonder then that when he was stricken with epilepsy in 1957, it went undiagnosed for an extended period of time, simply because he had experienced so many attacks of delirium tremens, better known as the "DTs." Eddie Taylor would relate how he sat directly in front of Reed in the studio, instructing him while the tune was being recorded exactly when to start to start singing, when to blow his harp, and when to do the turnarounds on his guitar. Jimmy Reed also appears, by all accounts, to have been unable to remember the lyrics to new songs -- even ones he had composed himself -- and Mama Reed would sit on a piano bench and whisper them into his ear, literally one line at a time. Blues fans who doubt this can clearly hear the proof on several of Jimmy's biggest hits, most notably "Big Boss Man" and "Bright Lights, Big City," where she steps into the fore and starts singing along with him in order to keep him on the beat.

But seemingly none of this mattered. While revisionist blues historians like to make a big deal about either the lack of variety of his work or how later recordings turned him into a mere parody of himself, the public just couldn't get enough of it. Jimmy Reed placed 11 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 pop charts and a total of 14 on the R&B charts, a figure that even a much more sophisticated artist like B.B. King couldn't top. To paraphrase the old saying, nobody liked Jimmy Reed but the people.

Reed's slow descent into the ravages of alcoholism and epilepsy roughly paralleled the decline of Vee-Jay Records, which went out of business at approximately the same time that his final 45 was released, "Don't Think I'm Through." His manager, Al Smith, quickly arranged a contract with the newly formed ABC-Bluesway label and a handful of albums were released into the '70s, all of them lacking the old charm, sounding as if they were cut on a musical assembly line. Jimmy did one last album, a horrible attempt to update his sound with funk beats and wah-wah pedals, before becoming a virtual recluse in his final years. He finally received proper medical attention for his epilepsy and quit drinking, but it was too late and he died trying to make a comeback on the blues festival circuit on August 29, 1976.

All of this is sad beyond belief, simply because there's so much joy in Jimmy Reed's music. And it's that joy that becomes self-evident every time you give one of his classic sides a spin. Although his bare-bones style influenced everyone from British Invasion combos to the entire school of Louisiana swamp blues artists (Slim Harpo and Jimmy Anderson in particular), the simple indisputable fact remains that -- like so many of the other originators in the genre -- there was only one Jimmy Reed. ---Cub Koda, allmusic.com

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