The first impression made here is surprisingly not from the master's guitar, but from his vocal, the song itself more of a doo wop ballad than a gutbucket blues. The only kind of T-Bone still savored by European blues fans since the mad cow disease scare barely plays guitar at all as the song begins to unfold, casually wrapping his lips around the lines like a saloon singer with a couple of shots under his belt. But when the instrumental section starts and he begins playing guitar, that's when the listener knows for sure this isn't a Johnny Hartman record. I Want a Little Girl was originally recorded in the late '60s for release on another label, and is in some ways like some of the sides Hartman created for Impulse with small combos backing him, sometimes even featuring guitarists, although never with the edge exhibited by Walker…

Eric Clapton's Crossroads Festival, which features world-class guitar players from all over the globe and has been held every three years since 2004, works as a fundraiser for the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a treatment and educational center Clapton founded in 1998 to help people suffering from chemical dependency. The first three concerts were single-day outdoor events held in Dallas in 2004, and in Chicago in 2007 and 2010, with the fourth, the concert represented by this two-disc set, moving indoors to Madison Square Garden in New York and expanding to two nights in 2013…

The posthumously assembled ten-track outtakes collection The Sky Is Crying actually proves to be one of Stevie Ray Vaughan's most consistent albums, rivaling In Step as the best outside of the Greatest Hits collection. These songs were recorded in sessions spanning from 1984's Couldn't Stand the Weather to 1989's In Step and were left off of the LPs for whatever reason (or, in the case of Soul to Soul's "Empty Arms," a different version was used)…

Bob Margolin's goal with this CD was to perform the type of blues-oriented music that he plays at home for his family. Through overdubbing, he is very much a self-sufficient one-man band. The variety of music that he performs spans several idioms, ranging from jump blues and "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You" to lowdown blues, Bob Dylan's "Tears of Rage," a few songs reminiscent of Muddy Waters (with whom he played regularly for seven years) and an occasional instrumental. Margolin's musicianship is impressive, his vocals are heartfelt, his originals are colorful and his spoken word story on "You Never Know" is realistic while containing a moral. This CD is easily recommended for blues fans.

The Crossroads Guitar Festival is a series of music festivals and benefit concerts founded by Eric Clapton. The festivals benefit the Crossroads Centre founded by Eric Clapton, a drug treatment center in Antigua. The concerts showcase a variety of guitarists, selected by Eric Clapton personally. To the 2007 audience, Clapton declared that each performer was one of the very best, and had earned his personal respect…

The only domestic compilation celebrating this trio's accomplishments is a 21-track affair containing Willie Dixon's "dozens" diatribe "Signifying Monkey," the catchy "Tell That Woman" (later covered by Peter, Paul & Mary as "Big Boat Up the River"), and several crackling instrumentals ("Big 3 Boogie," "Hard Notch Boogie Beat") that show what fine musicianship this triumvirate purveyed. Points off, though, for not including their only legit hit, "You Sure Look Good to Me."

Stevie Ray Vaughan had always been a phenomenal guitarist, but prior to In Step, his songwriting was hit or miss. Even when he wrote a classic modern blues song, it was firmly within the genre's conventions; only on Soul to Soul's exquisite soul-blues "Life Without You" did he attempt to stretch the boundaries of the form. As it turns out, that was the keynote for In Step, an album where Vaughan found his own songwriting voice, blending blues, soul, and rock in unique ways, and writing with startling emotional honesty…

Born in Alexandria, Egypt and migrated to Perth in 1963, Ivan Zar was drawn to the Blues at an early age and taught himself the harmonica and Delta Blues style Guitar. In 1968, he formed his first band "King Biscuit Co", as well as writing his own songs. After playing in several bands, Ivan formed a band called The Elks in 1975, which was to introduce the Chicago style of Blues to the mainstream. The band toured the South West and across to major cities in the Eastern States. They had the opportunity to support B.B King, Rory Gallagher, Joe Cocker and Ike and Tina Turner, and recorded an album Refer to Drawer, which is now a sought after Australian Blues album by blues affeciandos. In 1981, Ivan recorded some of the material that he had written and worked in a duo with Brian Fitzgerald called The Deltatones…

Highly-regarded blues singer and harmonica player, an unpredictable character, and a major figure of Chicago blues.
Sonny Boy Williamson was, in many ways, the ultimate blues legend. By the time of his death in 1965, he had been around long enough to have played with Robert Johnson at the start of his career and Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Robbie Robertson at the end of it. In between, he drank a lot of whiskey, hoboed around the country, had a successful radio show for 15 years, toured Europe to great acclaim and simply wrote, played and sang some of the greatest blues ever etched into black phonograph records…

Best known for his association with Muddy Waters in the 1970s, Steady Rollin' Bob Margolin is reunited with three other former Waters sidemen on this inspired solo effort: pianist Pinetop Perkins, bassist Calvin "Fuzzy" Jones, and drummer Willie "Big Eyes" Smith. The title sums it up - the album may have been recorded in various parts of the South, but the style is pure, unadulterated Chicago blues. A number of gutsy originals are included (most notably, "She and the Devil" and "Born in the Wrong Time") along with such time-honored Muddy Waters classics as "Mean Disposition," "She's So Pretty," and "Rollin' and Tumblin." As enjoyable as the band recordings are, the most inspired offering is the unaccompanied solo number "Born in the Wrong Time"….

There are a couple of names here, like Memphis Minnie and Lucille Bogan, that will be familiar to fans of the early blues on this interesting collection of female blues singers who recorded between 1923 and 1930, but most of these singers will be unknown to all but the most serious blues scholars and collectors. Most of them recorded sparingly, often cutting only the two sides of a single 78, before vanishing into the mists of history, remaining now only as vocal ghosts in the digital glow of the 21st century. Those voices, however, remain amazingly powerful, and the honest coarseness and barely veiled sexual themes of these songs is oddly refreshing and hopeful, and the directness of some of these sides seems bold even by today's standards…

Recorded Live, no location specified.
Universally hailed as the king of the blues, the legendary B.B. King was without a doubt the single most important electric guitarist of the last half of the 20th century. His bent notes and staccato picking style influenced legions of contemporary bluesmen, while his gritty and confident voice - capable of wringing every nuance from any lyric - provided a worthy match for his passionate playing. Between 1951 and 1985, King notched an impressive 74 entries on Billboard's R&B charts, and he was one of the few full-fledged blues artists to score a major pop hit when his 1970 smash "The Thrill Is Gone" crossed over to mainstream success (engendering memorable appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand)…