Review: 'Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings'

In my recent review of Chess's reissue of Muddy Waters's Folk Singer, I noted how the label consciously intended to appeal to the new movement of young folkies that emerged in the early sixties and how that album was a pure blues document regardless of its title. That was not to say that there is no relationship between the blues and folk music. It's just that Waters helped remake the blues into a thoroughly urban form that didn't plainly connect to the blues' rural roots. 

For a sampling of that brand of blues, I direct you to Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. On that 2003 comp you'll hear several instances in which blues butted right up against the sounds more associated with folk music: single-chord structures, scratchy acoustic guitars, wheezing harmonicas, steam-train rhythms, and mythic storytelling. 

Yet there is also great variety. Yes, tracks like Sonny Terry's "Old Jabo", Big Bill Broonzy's talking "Mule-Ridin' Blues", Etta Baker's "One Dime Blues", Son House's "Country Farm Blues", Pink Anderson's "Boll Weevil", and Reverend Gary Davis's "Candy Man" (the drug-dealer tribute later recorded by Donovan as opposed to Mississippi John Hurt's sex metaphor, as the liner notes suggest it is) very much have a foot in folk and a foot in blues. However,  Champion Jack Dupree's "Clog Dance" and Memphis Slim's "Joggie Boogie" are instrumental piano boogies, the later also featuring Willie Dixon's dynamic bass soloing. Vera Hall's "Black Woman" is an aching a cappella chant, Josh White's "Careless Love" is a romantic crooner, and both Etta Baker's "One Dime Blues" and Elizabeth's Cotten's extraordinary "Vastopol" are finger-picking rambles. Most unexpected of all in this company is hearing The Chambers Brothers bring the blues into the rock age a few years before they set the blues aside to score a hit with the mind-melting "Time Has Come Today". The recording dates of these tracks range from the mid-fifties all the way to 1992 when Baker recorded her number at the age of 79. No arthritis in those fingers.

All in all, this assortment of tracks gives a full-picture of the blues and makes for an always engaging, often delightful listen. So it's great that after twenty-three years Smithsonian Folkways is finally putting out its Classic Blues comp as a double-LP set, the first of the series' records to get the vinyl treatment. 

As mastered by Mike Monseur, the music is a touch bright but with a decent bottom and almost always very clear and present. A few of the older numbers, like "Clog Dance", show their age, but the tape hiss is never overwhelming. There's are moments of distortion and sibilance, and using a mono switch or cartridge tames that a bit. Only one track, opening number "Old Jabo", is in stereo to complicate that solution. 

The packaging is very handsomely done with a gatefold reproducing the original CD art and a three-panel insert for the illuminating track-by-track notes.