Bert Williams The Remaining Titles 1915 - 1921

Jazz & Blues Piano Vol 2 1924 - 1947

Son House Live At The Gaslight Cafe Jan 3rd 1965
DOCD-5663 Son House “Live” At The Gaslight Café, Jan 3rd 1965 Son House; vocal, guitar. Genres; Country Blues, Mississippi Delta Blues, Bottleneck-slide guitar. Informative booklet notes by Ken Romanowski. Detailed discography. Previously unreleased “in concert” recordings of the Mississippi blues marvel Son House, music associate of Charley Patton. The man who inspired musicians from Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters and to Johnny Winters and Mike Bloomfield and many others. He is known as the father of the Mississippi Delta Blues. Continued...

Lead Belly Private Party Minneapolis Minnesota 1948
DOCD-5664 Lead Belly Private Party Minneapolis Minnesota 1948 Leadbelly: vocal, 12-string guitar. Genres: Blues, Songster, Country Blues, Texas Country Blues, 12-String Guitar. Informative booklet notes. Detailed discography An extraordinary evening in the company of the great Texas songster, Lead Belly. In the relaxed atmosphere of an informal party the listener is given an up-close, dynamically interactive display by a master songster and storyteller, once a music companion to the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson. "Play this for you and then I'm gonna let you people walk around. After that I got a couple of more I got to play you about Mississippi - I got to give you - I got two or three I want you to hear - see how you gonna like it, then - we can all get together, it won't be no stormy weather 'cause I'm gonna drink with you, talk with you and we'll just relax. Now this is gonna be the Gailis Pole and it's ragtime. Tell you about your so-called friends." Continued...

Henry Thomas Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order 1927-1929

DOCD-5665 Henry Thomas 'Ragtime Texas'

Complete Recordings (1927-1929) Henry Thomas, vocal, guitar, quills.
Genres: Country Blues, Songster, Texas Country Blues.

Informative booklet notes by Ken Romanowski.
Detailed discography.

There is something ineluctably joyous about the music of Henry Thomas - an exuberance, an ebullience that is utterly infectious and captivating. The music is archetypically American, figuratively capturing the perpetual motion of a hobo Texas songster and offering a panorama of vernacular song from the 1870s to the late 1920s. Among the twenty-three recordings he left for posterity are religious songs, ballads, reels, blues, and "rags". Continued...

Jazzin' the Blues Vol 5 1930-1953
DOCD-5666 Jazzin' the Blues Vol 5 1930-1953 Various Informative booklet notes by Chris Smith. Detailed discography. This collection is from the jazzier end of the blues spectrum ranging from small group Swing to the early Jazz Revival, spanning between New York and New Orleans. The music is lively, rich and at times poetic. A heady mixture created when Jazz meets the Blues. Continued...

Sammy Price & The Blues Singers Vol 1. 1938-1941
DOCD-5667 Sammy Price & The Blues Singers Vol 1. 1938-1941 Various Informative booklet notes by Chris Smith. Detailed discography. Extract from this CD’s booklet notes: In addition to recordings made under his own name Sam Price became the house pianist for Decca in New York and appeared on many blues sides with such singers as Trixie Smith and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. His solid, imaginative blues, jazz, boogie-woogie and swing based piano accompaniments were vital ingredients to the success of many recordings. This is the first of two CDs to present some of the fruits of Price's seventeen years at Decca, and features female vocalists throughout, apart from the anonymous male who was one-third of the Ebony Three. Continued...

Sammy Price & The Blues Singers Vol 2. 1939-1949
DOCD-5668 Sammy Price & The Blues Singers Volume 2 – 1939-1949 Various artists Genres: Blues, Jazz, Swing, Informative booklet notes by Chris Smith. Detailed discography. In addition to recordings made under his own name Sam Price became the house pianist for Decca in New York and appeared on many blues sides with such singers as Trixie Smith and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. His solid, imaginative blues, jazz, boogie-woogie and swing based piano accompaniments were vital ingredients to the success of many recordings. Continued...

Tommy McClennan The Complete Recordings Vol. 1 (1939-1940)
Tommy McClennan - The Complete Recordings Vol. 1 (1939-1940) Tommy McLennan, vocal, guitar. Genres; “Country” Blues, Mississippi Blues. Informative booklet notes by Keith Briggs. Detailed discography. Tommy McClennan was born on the J.E. Sligh Farm near Yazoo City, Mississippi, on April 8, 1908. He was a self taught guitar player and was influenced by Rubin Lacy, Charley Patton, Ishman Bracey and Tommy Johnson. His guitar playing is typical of the Mississippi style; simple, dominant, solid rhythms from the bass end with dashes of spikey treble riffs interjected between the vocal choruses. His voice was rough, hoarse and loud. Loud enough to be heard over the hubbub in a Mississippi juke joint on a Saturday night...

Tommy McClennan The Complete Recordings Vol. 2 (1940-1942)

Mississippi Blues Vol. 3 Complete Recordings of Robert Petway, Mississippi Matilda, Sonny Boy Nelson
DOCD-5671 Mississippi Blues Vol. 3 Robert Petway, vocal, guitar. “Mississippi” Matilda, vocal. “Sonny Boy” Nelson (Eugene Powell ) , vocal guitar. With contributions by; Bo Carter, guitar. Alfred Elkins, stand-up bass. Willie Harris, vocal, guitar. Genre; Mississippi “Country” Blues. Informative booklet notes by Chris Smith. Detailed discography. Robert Petway made the first recording of Catfish Blues, and there’s a good case for believing that he composed it: ‘He just made that song up and used to play it at them old country dances. He just made it up and kept it in his head,’ says Honeyboy Edwards, who learned the song from Petway in person. The first bars of 'Catfish Blues' locate his music squarely in the gravel-voiced, rhythm-dominated tradition usually thought of as typical of the Mississippi Delta; the song chugs implacably on, powered by a monochordal riff. Petway was no guitar virtuoso, but he ably exploited his National steel guitar’s capacity for volume, and made effective use of the trademark triplet runs which can be heard in many of his songs; during Ride ‘Em On Down he varies the device, providing instead an exciting rush of sixteenth notes. Like McClennan, Robert favoured a dramatic vocal delivery, growling out the lyrics, bearing down hard on the beat, and encouraging himself with spoken asides. Continued...

Field Recordings Vol. 15 (1941-1942) Mississippi
DOCD-5672 Field Recordings Vol. 15 (Mississippi 1941-1942) “Rock Me, Shake Me” Various artists. Genres: Mississippi Blues, Country Blues, Songster. Informative booklet notes by Robert Groom. Detailed discography. Extracts abridged from this CD’s booklet notes: Out in the hill country of North Mississippi, in Tate and Panola counties, east of the Delta, a family of musicians were active for over a century. Fiddler Doc Hemphill had a string band back in the 1880s and 90s and his son Sid Hemphill picked up where his father left off. Sid was a multi-instrumentalist with a repertoire of around a hundred tunes and songs. His various bands performed in the hill country, in the Delta (where Turner Junior Johnson recommended Alan Lomax to seek out the “boar-hog musician”, Sid Hemphill), up in Memphis, out in Alabama. Sid Hemphill’s string bands were augmented with drums, and his own quills and fife. A long-time associate was banjo player Lucius Smith (b. 1892) who played with Hemphill for 54 years. Continued...