• List Price: $7.99  
• Your Price: $4.95
• In Stock: 69

You must login to place orders.




Not purchasing for a business? See our consumer site.

Document's second budget sampler, lovingly put together selections, with no didactic agenda, whose one and only purpose is to offer an hour or so of unmitigated good listening. The compiler of this anthology knows a good record when he hears it, as it offers one stunner after another. Well, maybe every track isn't in the same class as the very best, but they're all excellent and there's an unfailing sense of a continuing high as it moves along. Bukka White's 'Fixin' To Die', Memphis Minnie's 'New Dirty Dozen', and Skip James' beautiful live 1964 version of 'Illinois' are probably the very cream of the crop, but it's a thrill to hear the mandolin instrumental 'Lint Head Stomp' by Phebel Wright (one of three white men included), Lonnie Farris' breathtaking 'Golden Street', classic jazz at something pretty close to its best with 'You Need Some Loving', featuring Jelly Roll Morton alongside Johnny Dunn, or the sheer joy of 'Guitar Swing' by the Brown Bombers (with Casey Bill on slide guitar). One purpose here is to showcase the fact that there was so much wonderful music being made outside of the 'big names', and so to encourage more intrepid exploration of the Document catalog - Frank Hutchinson's virtuoso slide guitar and laconic vocals, the swinging good times of Big Joe McCoy and Co., the proto-R&B of Jewel Paige (and even Bumble Bee Slim), Blind John Davis striking sparks off his piano keyboard. But there are big names here, too - none bigger than Muddy Waters, heard on his originally un-issued 1946 Columbia session. At the other end of the spectrum there's field recordings from both Africa and the USA. If you like variety, you'll find it here, and guaranteed high quality at the same time.

Track Listing