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VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Best of the Blues (UTV Records)
Reviewed by Eric Steiner
I can't imagine an inherently more frustrating or exhilarating assignment: to capture some of the highlights of Martin Scorsese's groundbreaking music and film experience from the Year of the Blues on a single disc. To review: The Blues featured seven PBS films, a special 5-CD companion boxed set, coffee table book, plus a dozen CDs devoted to individual artists, all with the distinctive look and feel of The Blues promotional campaign. The Best of the Blues contains 21 songs that many blues fans already have on their original release or one compilation or another. This 76-minute disc includes "The Thrill is Gone," "Boom Boom," and "Evil (Is Going On)," but I'd bet that few compilations have Janis Joplin, Los Lobos, or Son House on them along with those songs from BB King, Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf. This UTV Records won't please everyone (where's "Dust My Broom" or anything from Johnny Winter?, for example), but like other UTV products I've reviewed here at Cosmik Debris, this collection is a great blues party record. The Best of the Blues may be an impossible assignment -- to cull the best songs from over 500 songs included in Scorsese's heartfelt gift to the blues -- but he's picked some songs that are sure to pique blues fans' interest not only in the series, but the artists as well.
Track List:
Cross Road Blues/Robert Johnson * Muddy Water (A Mississippi Moan)/Bessie Smith * Devil Got My Woman/Skip James * Evil (Is Going On)/Howlin' Wolf * (I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man/Muddy Waters * Boom Boom/John Lee Hooker * Hard Times (No One Knows Better than I)/Ray Charles * I'd Rather Go Blind/Etta James * The Thrill Is Gone/BB King * All Your Love/John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton * One Good Man/Janis Joplin * Red House/Jimi Hendrix Experience * One Way Out (live)/The Allman Brothers Band * Pride and Joy/Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble * Am I Wrong/Keb' Mo' * Just Won't Burn/Susan Tedeschi * Voodoo Music/Los Lobos * Vietnam Blues/Cassandra Wilson * Round and Round/Bonnie Raitt * I Pity the Fool (live)/Robert Cray and Shemekia Copeland
© 2004 - Eric Steiner