Blues Compilation Box of the Blues (2003)
Box of the Blues (2003)
Box of the Blues (2003)
CD1 01 - Mississippi Fred McDowell - 61 Highway 02 - Babe Stovall & Herb Quinn - See See Rider 03 - Memphis Slim & Sonny Boy Williamson - I Could Hear My Name Ringin' 04 - Robert Nighthawk - Cheating And Lying Blues 05 - Johnny Shines & Robert Jr. Lockwood - Lonesome Whistle 06 - Etta Baker - Broken Hearted Blues 07 - Buster Brown - I'm Gonna Make You Happy 08 - Boogie Bill Webb - Dooleyville Blues 09 - Cephas & Wiggins - One Kind Favor 09 - Larry Davis - Goin' Out West (Part 1 And Part 2) 10 - Otis Spann - Blues For Martin Luther King 11 - David ''Honeyboy'' Edwards - Wind Howlin' Blues 12 - Blind Willie McTell - Dying Crapshooter's Blues 13 - Big Joe Williams - Screamin' And Cryin' 14 - Mississipi John Hurt - Candy Man 15 - Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee - The Red Cross Store CD2 01 - Gatemouth Brown - One More Mile 02 - Carey Bell - My Eyes Keep Me In Trouble 03 - Champion Jack Dupree - Give Me Flowers While I'm Living 04 - Eddy The Chief Clearwater - Cool Blues Walk 05 - Philip Walker - Port Arthur Blues 06 - Johnny Copeland - Nobody But You 07 - Willie Cobbs - Jukin' 08 - Johnny Young - Johnny's Jump (previously unreleased) 10 - Jimmy Rogers - Walking By Myself 11 - Lowell Fulson - Blues And My Guitar 12 - J.B. Hutto & The New Hawks - Eighteen Year Old Girl 13 - Luther Guitar Junior Johnson The Magic Rockers - I'm From Mississippi 14 - Lonesome Sundown - This Is The Blues 15 - Smokey Wilson - The Man From Mars CD3 01 - Anson Funderburgh & The Rockets - Change In My Pocket 02 - Marcia Ball - Blue House 03 - Geoff Muldaur - Meanest Woman 04 - Andrew Jr. Boy Jones - Make Some Changes 05 - Tarbox Ramblers - Down South Blues 06 - Chris Duarte Group - How Long 07 - Candeye Kane - I'm The Toughest Girl Alive 08 - Corey Harris - Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning 09 - Rory Block - Frankie And Albert 10 - Duke Robillard And The Pleasure Kings - What That Means To Me 11 - Roomful Of Blues - Let Me Live 12 - Little Jimmy King & The Memphis Soul Survivors - Lovin' Someone Else 13 - George Thorogood - John Hardy 14 - Smokin Joe Kubek & Little Milton - One Night Affair 15 - Michelle Wilson - Shifting Sands CD4 01 - Ruth Brown - A Good Day For The Blues 02 - Wilson Pickett - Outskirts Of Town 03 - Bobby King & Terry Evans - Live And Let Live 04 - Johnny Adams - Roadblock 05 - Otis Clay - I Can Take You To Heaven Tonight 06 - Solomon Burke - Got To Get Myself Some Money 07 - Paul Kelly - Nowhere To Hide 08 - Little Buster And The Soul Brothers - What Can I Do (Somebody Tell Me) 09 - Theryl Houseman DeClouet - Two Wrongs 10 - Charles Brown - I Stepped In Quicksand 11 - Ann Peebles - Ain't No Business Like Your Business 12 - Holmes Brothers - Promised Land 13 - Irma Thomas & Tracy Nelson - You Don't Know Nothin' About Love 14 - Ted Hawkins - Bring It On Home Daddy 15 - Walter ''Wolfman'' Washington - Out Of The Dark
Rounder's four-CD Box of the Blues is, by looking at its inclusion of tracks, seemingly an ambitious proposition. But looks can be deceiving. Compiled and introduced by vice president of A&R Scott Billington -- a man whose credentials, when it comes to fighting for and preserving blues traditions, are unassailable -- these discs become a kind of theme-oriented blur of Rounder's substantial catalog holdings. Billington's schemata are quirky, sometimes ironic, and sometimes downright scary and profound as the set's first and second discs' "61 Highway" and "One More Mile" attest. The first CD concentrates its energies on the revelation of blues as it came up from the Mississippi Delta in the music of Fred McDowell, Johnny Shines, Etta Baker, Blind Willie McTell, John Hurt, and others and mutated up north to Chicago with Otis Spann, Robert Nighthawk, and others. On disc two, the blues becomes a more regional concern as expressed by everyone from Gatemouth Brown to Jack Dupree to Willie Cobbs and J.B. Hutto. Texas and News Orleans are prominently featured. And disc four, being a mishmash of current styles, has its merits even if the strategy is hard to decipher -- perhaps it is only that Billington put his favorite cuts on the disc, which would make it plenty valid even if it is a careening listen. But "Change in the Pocket" is erratic in its presentations of traditional purveyors of the music from George Thorogood and Corey Harris to the Tarbox Ramblers and Roomful of Blues. Here everything feels willy-nilly and reeks of some kind of revisionism. But still, three out of four isn't bad and the price is right, too. This is no Grammy-deserving compilation, but there are some amazing things on it -- even if it feels like Rounder patting itself on the back and trying to cash in on Martin Scorsese's Presents the Blues series on PBS. ---Thom Jurek, Rovi
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