Mississippi Blues

bought it as a gift for my hubby, but I love it too.

If you like good old Delta blues....then you'll LOVE this CD. I have one and gave one as a gift and the entire family listened to it over Christmas and everyone loved it.

This is another good CD I found at my friend Regina's shop, Art and Soul, in Vicksburg, MS (the south end of the Delta). It is a sampling of 11 vocalists, with various instrumental (guitar, harmonica, and/or keyboard with backup on drums, etc.). It is one of the collections put together by Putumayo, and includes a small bonus booklet inside the CD case giving a brief background of the musician/vocalists included - some are deceased, i.e., Luther Allison in 1997, Junior Wells in 1998, John Lee Hooker in 2001, and Memphis Minnie in 1963. I have it playing on my Windows media player as I write this. Playing time of the individual selections ranges from 2:23 (Bobby Bland) to 5:53 (Junior Wells).

After hurricane Katrina has raged in this region the Sound of the Mississippi delta music became all the more precious. Of course "St. James Infirmary", the standard ballad for all New Orleans funerals, is represented. It talks about the pain of a man who has seen his wife a last time: "so sweet, so cool, so fair, stretched out on a long white table" in the hospital. What a music will arise now, after the dead bodies are "disposed of" with so few care. I still have a photo in my mind as a woman (near the flooded Canal Street) shoves her dead husband, whom she has bound on a door, through the water. Only the music with this Mississippi feeling, no further newspaper report, will soothe me in such moments. But if I hear the calming voice of Mississippi John Hurt again - or the infectious energy of Tina Turner - then, I think, it will go on again...

I heard this cd while shopping and EVERY TUNE was so hot I had to have it! Every track is unique, the artists soulful and exude the blues from their bones. This CD takes you to another place and time where it is good to feel the blues!