Bman's Blues Report

Smithsonian Folkways has been the ultimate vault for American roots music since 1948 , when founder Moses Asch started capturing raw, unvarnished sounds that mainstream labels ignored. Asch made it his mission to document the blues as living history, tracking legendary artists across decades. When the Smithsonian took over the catalog in 1987, they promised to keep every single recording permanently available, preserving the foundational DNA of American music. For years, their absolute gold-standard blues anthology was a 26-track CD from 2003 called Classic Blues . It packed 50 years of music—from the 1940s to the 1990s—into one masterclass collection, covering everything from gritty Delta styles to smooth Chicago electric tracks. It became a massive hit for the label, but vinyl fans had to wait more than twenty years to finally get it on wax. That wait ended in the summer of 2026 when Folkways finally dropped Classic Blues as a gatefold double-LP vinyl reissue . The remastered 2-LP ...

I just received a new release, Delmark 60 Years of Blues and it's terrific! Opening with Studebaker John's Maxwell Street Kings and When They Played The Real Blues . John on harp, guitar and vocals drives a hard Chicago line on this super track from Kingsville Jukin'. Really hot! Following this track is Junior Wells and Rock me Baby from the Southside Blues Jam sessions. With Otis Spann on piano, Louis Meyers on guitar, and Wells on vocal and harp, this is a band that is hard to beat. Wells is on top of his game and Spann is one of my all time favorite blues pianists so this track is primo! Lindsey Alexander plays Raffle Ticket with Mike Wheeler on guitar Roosevelt Purifoy laying down some excellent piano. Alexander leads a tight ship on this track released on Been There Done That. Magic Sam plays I Don't Want No Woman , from his Live At The Advant Garde. His guitar work is finely articulated and his vocals are inspired. This track is swinging! Quintus McCormic...

Joseph Lee Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982), billed throughout his career as Big Joe Williams, was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over four decades, he recorded such songs as "Baby Please Don't Go", "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama" for a variety of record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. Williams was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 1992. Blues historian Barry Lee Pearson (Sounds Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story, Virginia Piedmont Blues) attempted to document the gritty intensity of the Williams persona in this description: "When I saw him playing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at the Fickle Pickle, Williams was playing an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling aga...

Joseph Lee Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982), billed throughout his career as Big Joe Williams, was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over four decades, he recorded such songs as "Baby Please Don't Go", "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama" for a variety of record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. Williams was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 1992. Blues historian Barry Lee Pearson (Sounds Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story, Virginia Piedmont Blues) attempted to document the gritty intensity of the Williams persona in this description: "When I saw him playing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at the Fickle Pickle, Williams was playing an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling against...

Joseph Lee Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982), billed throughout his career as Big Joe Williams, was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over four decades, he recorded such songs as "Baby Please Don't Go", "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama" for a variety of record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. Williams was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 1992. Blues historian Barry Lee Pearson (Sounds Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story, Virginia Piedmont Blues) attempted to document the gritty intensity of the Big Joe persona in this description: When I saw him playing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at the Fickle Pickle, Williams was playing an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling against that. ...

Joseph Lee Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982), billed throughout his career as Big Joe Williams, was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over four decades, he recorded such songs as "Baby Please Don't Go", "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama" for a variety of record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. Williams was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 1992. Blues historian Barry Lee Pearson (Sounds Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story, Virginia Piedmont Blues) attempted to document the gritty intensity of the Big Joe persona in this description: When I saw him playing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at the Fickle Pickle, Williams was playing an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling against that. ...