Friday, 12 August 2016

The Rough Guide To Blues Women


Rating: 5/5

Review: A brilliant collection



This is absolutely fantastic.  It's a superb collection of great music in great performances which have been well remastered so they sound pretty clean but still thoroughly authentic.

Before I heard this, my knowledge of blues women of this period didn’t extend much beyond Bessie Smith so I'm no expert, but there is some simply brilliant stuff here.  There's a variety of styles including solo guitar or solo piano accompaniment (often excellently played), New Orleans-style jazz band and plenty of others.  I'd never heard of many of these women and, having heard this collection, I am heartily ashamed of the fact.  When I got to Track 3, Pick Poor Robin Clean by Geeshie Wiley, it stopped me in my tracks and plenty of others have had a similar effect.  There are some truly excellent performances here and I find the whole thing a delight.

I don't know what a true aficionado would make of this, but to this very amateur enthusiast it's an utterly brilliant collection of gems of which I was almost completely unaware.  If you have any interest whatsoever in this period of blues/jazz, don't hesitate.  This is a monumental bargain which I can recommend wholeheartedly.

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