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Volume 30 in the Hillbilly & Country Recordings kicks off today with another classic from the Stanley Brothers, 3 classics from the great Hank Williams, more from the Delmore Brothers & Louvin Brothers, 3 classics from the Carter Family, one of Woody Guthrie's finest recordings, plus Merle Travis, Hank Snow, Don Gibson, Kitty Wells, and many others. A smorgasbord of hillbilly & country music for your listening pleasure.
But today's highlight is something I've been planning to compile for some time now. A compilation of 25 of the most intense & powerful electric blues guitar playing ever put on record. This is what an Englishman would call "The Dog's Bollocks" of blues guitar. Starting the ball rolling is Eddie 'Guitar Slim' Jones with 'The Story Of My Life', recorded in New Orleans in 1954, with Ray Charles on piano. I'll never forget hearing this for the first time, in Sydney in 1972. Nothing I'd ever heard before had prepared me for Eddie's solo on this track...the dirty tone of his guitar, the attack, the aggression, the sheer intensity of it. Following hot on the heels of Eddie Jones is Little Joe Blue with 'You Keep My Nose To The Grindstone', the first of two live recordings in this collection. Recorded at the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1974, this absolutely blistering guitar solo was for years mistakenly thought to be played by Joe himself, but today the consensus is that it's an unidentified guitarist in Joe's back up band. As Frank 'Paris Slim' Goldwasser said when he first heard this track, "It's not for the faint hearted." The mighty Albert Collins follows with 'Freeze', then Ike Turner's rocking 'Cubano Jump', also sometimes titled 'Hey Miss Tina', and next is James Cotton's classic 1954 Sun recording 'Cotton Crop Blues' with Pat (I'm Gonna Murder My Baby) Hare's explosive guitar. At this point it's interesting to consider how many of these early electric blues guitarists had such wonderful raw gritty distorted guitar tones on their earliest recordings. Most of them played cheap Harmony guitars, ordered through the Sears catalogues, and played through crappy little amps that were cranked the whole way up so the cones were rattling, giving distorted tones. However, as they sold records and made some money, most of them invested in better equipment, but their subsequent recordings frequently lacked the magical dirty raw tones of their early recordings. Although he was generally considered a slick & polished performer, B.B. King certainly played his fair share of raw & gutsy guitar in the early stages of his career and here are two fine examples from the early 1950s: 'She Don't Move Me No More' and '3 O'clock Blues'. Sly Williams' 'Boot Hill' crops up regularly on blues guitar compilations and just can't be missed, this is some of the most violent guitar playing ever captured on record. Fention Robinson follows with 'The Getaway', then two fine classics from Magic Sam are followed by blues guitar giants Pee Wee Crayton, Freddie King, Earl Hooker, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Albert King & Johnny Guitar Watson, all superb players with standout tracks recorded at the peak of their fretboard powers. The last track, and the second live recording in this collection, comes from John Lee Hooker's son, John Lee Hooker Jr. performing 'Superlover' live at Soledad Prison in 1972, with Charlie Grimes backing him with all that glorious dirty-toned blues guitar playing.
And finally, it's fitting that today's photo is the great man himself, Eddie Jones (December 10, 1926 - February 7, 1959), better known as Guitar Slim.
