featured blues albums
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- Sonny Landreth
- Elemental Journey
- Elemental Journey is Sonny Landreth's 11th solo album, and it's his first all-instrumental outing, and folks, this isn't a blues album.
- The Animals
- The Very Best of the Animals
- A concise ten-track budget set of the early hits of the Animals during the so-called Mickie Most years (1964 to 1966) with Columbia and Decca.
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- Warren Haynes
- Live at the Moody Theater
- Live at the Moody Theater documents Warren Haynes' killer band (and guests) barnstorming through Man in Motion, earlier tunes, and covers.
- B.B. King
- Live at the Royal Albert…
- This good-natured live set was recorded at London's Royal Albert Hall and features B.B. King in chatty good humor with a whole host of guests.
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- Tedeschi Trucks Band
- Live: Everybody's Talkin'
- On the Live: Everybody's Talkin', the Tedeschi Trucks Band delivers full-bore with originals from Revelator and wonderfully chosen covers.
- Mud Morganfield
- Son of the Seventh Son
- Mud Morganfield delivers a blistering set of blues orignals and covers on Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.
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- George Winston
- Gulf Coast Blues &…
- The second volume in George Winston's Gulf Coast Blues & Impressions is as inspired -- if not more so -- than the first.
- Bonnie Raitt
- Slipstream
- Bonnie Raitt's Slipstream is her first record since Souls Alike in 2005, and reveals her at a creative peak.
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- Ike Turner
- Real Gone Rocket: Session…
- This collection gathers obscure sides from Turner's salad days as a session player and songwriter in the R&B; sector of early rock & roll.
- Etta James
- I Just Want to Make Love…
- This set includes sides the late and great Etta James cut with Chess Records in 1960 and 1961, including the entire At Last LP
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- Joan Osborne
- Bring It On Home
- Joan Osborne co-produces the raw, gritty, passionate Bring It On Home, a collection of classic and obscure soul, blues, and R&B; covers.
- Clarence "Gatemouth" B …
- Live from Austin, TX
- This CD/DVD presents a show Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown did for Austin City Limits in 1996.
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- Fats Domino
- The Imperial Singles,…
- The fifth and final volume in Fats Domino's Imperial Singles from Ace, documents his commercial decline but features some excellent tracks.
- Otis Taylor
- Otis Taylor's Contraband
- Otis Taylor expands his provocative 21st century blues while embodying its spirit on the stellar Contraband.
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- The Carolina Chocolate …
- Leaving Eden
- This set, produced by Buddy Miller, feels like a Saturday night throw down under the summer stars. It almost seems timeless, perhaps because it defies time.
- Curtis Salgado
- Soul Shot
- Journeyman soul singer/harpist Curtis Salgado reunites with some of his Clean Getaway players in this terrific set that leaves listeners wanting more.
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about blues
Blues is about tradition and personal expression. At its core, the blues has remained the same since its inception. Most blues feature simple, usually three-chord, progressions and have simple structures that are open to endless improvisations, both lyrical and musical. The blues grew out of African spirituals and worksongs. In the late 1800s, southern African-Americans passed the songs down orally, and they collided with American folk and country from the Appalachians. New hybrids appeared by each region, but all of the recorded blues from the early 1900s are distinguished by simple, rural acoustic guitars and pianos. After World War II, the blues began to fragment, with some musicians holding on to acoustic traditions and others taking it to jazzier territory. However, most bluesmen followed Muddy Waters' lead and played the blues on electric instruments. From that point on, the blues continued to develop in new directions -- particularly on electric instruments -- or it has been preserved as an acoustic tradition.