My Essential Blues Albums

5 albums that changed the way I listen to music

Inspired

Alan Paul

’s “Essential Blues Albums Picked by Essential Blues Artists — and me” (Read it here), I offer my top 5 blues records.

Alan posted responses from Gregg Allman and Warren Haynes, among others, before providing his own thoughts. I figured I’d offer my own.

My most essential blues records

Rather than attempt to show what an expert I am on the blues, these are the records that grabbed me and why. I could easily double the list.

I’m struck by several things when I look at this en toto. First, besides At Fillmore East, I have been listening to most of these records for 40 years. They are the blues albums that have been with me the longest, which says something to me to me about formative experiences and their impact.

Live albums

As I made this list, it’s not surprising that three of my five top blues albums are live. I’ve always preferred live albums for the different energy they bring than studio recordings.

It’s probably why I ended up so attracted to the Allman Brothers Band and wrote Play All Night!

I am nothing if not consistent.

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I discovered the blues when I first started playing guitar at age 12.

It started a 40-year passion and pursuit of the music that shows no signs of abating. Blues mattered to me for many reasons.

The blues is wonderful, gripping music, but there was more to it than that. I grew to love and study the history of the men and women who made blues music; it brought to life the lives and struggles of era I studied (20th century American South).

It was also music I could play from my (then) limited skill set. Topping it all off was that a love of the music was something my pops and I shared together. He preferred the country blues, me the more electric/urban blues.

Herewith, in no particular order.

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Muddy Waters At Newport 1960

Muddy was my first blues hero. This album is where I became a devotee. I’d asked Dad for a Muddy Waters record for Christmas. This was the one under the tree. From the opening slide riff in “I’ve Got My Brand on You” to Otis Spann’s impromptu “Goodbye Newport,” every note on this one just hits.

And know yer history kids, “Muddy Waters invented electricity!”

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B. B. King Live in Cook County Jail

I came to Gregg Allman’s favorite B.B. record, Live at the Regal, late. This has always been my go-to record from the King of the Blues

Dad had this album: a scratchy record in a denim blue sleeve that I could not get enough of. B.B.’s playing is an extension of his singing, which itself is beyond belief.

My highlight track has always been “How Blue Can You Get?”

I once played it for a college class. As B.B. played the shit out of the long instrumental intro, one student asked “When’s he gonna start singing?”

“He’s singing now,” I whispered back.

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Eric Clapton Il Blues Di Eric Clapton

Don’t let the cover photo fool you, this is not the coked out, boozed up Clapton of the mid-70s emerging from his Layla exile. It’s instead a compilation of great blues he recorded in the mid-60s.

My guitar teacher bought me this record for my 13th birthday. At that point I thought Clapton was the sin qua non of guitarists. Eight of its tracks were from the Clapton’s time with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. It was the first time I heard “Stormy Monday.”

But what really stood out for me are the AMAZING cuts with New Orleans piano great Champion Jack Dupree, particularly the penultimate cut “Third Degree.”

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Various Artists The Story of the Blues

A companion to British historian Paul Oliver’s book of the same name, this is way less a comprehensive history of the blues and more a history of country blues.

What made this record stand out to me were the extensive liner notes. The stories of the bluesmen and the world they lived gave meaning to the music I was learning on guitar.

I appreciated also that Oliver used music to connect the blues to Africa — even if I’ve since learned “Yarum Praise Songs” aren’t really the example of that connection in the way Oliver presented it. Dad loved this album because it was mostly all acoustic and we listened to it a lot together

The double-entendre of Blind Boy Fuller and Sonny Terry’s “I Want Some of Your Pie” was a lesson in clever wordplay.

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The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East

I can’t put into words how influential this album, this sound, has been to my life. It offered everything the above gave me but a whole lot more. “What band combines all of this in one place so brilliantly?” is a question I’ve pondered for many more hours than I’d care to admit.

Ultimately, I chose to write Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East to make sense of it all.

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