The Best of the Blues: The 101 Essential Blues Albums

Like any best of list there will always be debate about what is in, where in the list it is rated and more importantly what was left off. Robert Santelli is used to this kind of debate having created the top 500 Rock-N-Roll songs. I enjoyed the booked and have referenced back to it several times. The blues are a lot like Frank Zappa - the music is great, but there are a lot of sucky albums out there. Even the great artist like John Lee and Muddy have a fair number of stinker albums you would want to avoid. This book is a good resource from which I have discovered some great music. It have been fun to compare my collection to this list. My biggest pet pive I had with the list is the 'overrating' of the historically significant albums. There are some very important albums in teh history of the blues, but that doesn't mean I want to listen to them. If you are looking for a fun light guide to discovering the blues this is a good place to start.

As soon as I saw the listing of 101 top blues recordings I knew that many people would be angry that their favorites weren't included. But the writer freely admits in the introduction that other choices could be possible. I really respect the research that he did--eventually acquiring over 1000 blues CDs, not to mention the scads of vinyl LPs that he already had. Sounds like he has listened to a lot more blues than any of the reviewers that have written here. But there is a certain inconsistency in Santelli's presentation. He sometimes sneaks in another recommendation or two under an album's description. For instance when describing "As Blue As A Man Can Be" by Robert Pete Williams, he also gives a strong recommendation to "When A Man Takes The Blues". A better organization and title for the book would have been: The 101 Essential Blues Artists. Then under each artist he could have recommended their essential recordings. Also, why the fixation with the number "101". By firmly adhering to 101 albums he excluded several essential artists. Another complaint is that with multiple recommendations for some artists like Skip James and Big Mama Thorton, other very significant people in the blues, like Willie Dixon got skipped. And, Santelli sometimes makes the wrong recommendations. For instance, the Muddy Waters Chess Box Set has 3 CDs for a good price and is a better buy than buying "The Best of Muddy Waters" and "Trouble No More: The Singles" separately (the Box Set combines both of those CDs and more). He also gives Muddy Waters too many slots (four is too much for one artist), e.g., you don't need to buy Real Folk Singer--a sampling of that album is included in the above mentioned Muddy Waters Chess Box. He gives Little Walter 2 slots in his 101 albums hierarchy when both of his recommendations are can be purchased together, for a better price, in The Essential Little Walter Chess Box (has 2 CDs),and then only take one position in the 101 list.In Dixon's case, as predominately a songwriter and bass player, he mostly plays on other musicians' records like Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and many others but his "I Am the Blues" album or his Chess Box Set should have been included to give him the recognition that he deserves. Willie's songs MADE Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Little Walter. For those of you not familiar with Dixon's work, he wrote Spoonful (made famous by Cream), Same Thing (recorded by many artists), Backdoor Man (covered by many including John Hammond and The Doors), I Can't Quit You Baby (Led Zepplin), The Seventh Son (Johnny Rivers), I Ain't Superstitous (Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart), You Shook Me (Led Zepplin), Little Red Rooster (many including The Rolling Stones), Hoochie Coochie Man (countless artists including John Lee Hooker), and I Just Want To Make Love To You (a blues and rock standard). This is just a tiny sampling of what Willie Dixon wrote and of course, all of the songs that I listed were core songs in the re

Some blues collectors may quible with a few of the selections or the order in which the albums are placed, but this book directs the reader to a wonderful selection of essential blues music. Many of the currently popular blues magazines focus on two paragraph "toss-off" reviews of current releases and ignore some of the great music that is the foundation of the art form. This book provides a guide that directs the listener to the "right stuff" and provides useful historical information that will help people understand the connections this music has with contemporary rock and country. The commentary on each album will also enhance the over-all listening experience. The book overlooks a few masterpeices like the Yazoo Sleepy John Estes collection, and Big Joe Williams on Delmark and Smithsonian Folkways. It is also heavy on Fat Possum artists who could have been addressed in the excellent "Best of Fat Possum" collection. This is small potatoes however as the book directs the reader to almost one hundred great blues albums and everyone who buys it will find some musical treasurers to be discovered. Along with the All Music Guide to the Blues, and Peter Guralnick's Listener's Guide to the Blues this book is a great tool for any serious listener.

I purchased this book as a gift for my brother in-law who is a musician. We both appreciate the blues and I thought this would be a good gift. I also thought that I would start his blues collection by buying one of the albums listed in the book. I brought the book to the record store and started shopping. This book allowed me to sift through the many albums available and pick out a really outstanding one by Howling Wolf. I passed over many recordings that the book panned due to recording quality or lack of songs and I wouldn't have known this otherwise. I feel this book is an essential tool for blues lovers wanting to build a record collection. Especially those who don't have a lot of time or money to waste. The only frustrating thing about it is that now I have to buy one for ME!