A sort of a sequel to Gatemouth's 1974 Cajun country & western cowboy album Down South in the Bayou Country, the originally issued Bogalusa Boogie Man consists of 12 tracks performed in more or less that same vein. "Bogalusa Boogie Man" was recorded in Bogalusa, LA, during March of 1975, almost exactly one year after Bayou Country. Material for this project was composed by Danny Morrison, Red Lane, Hoyt Garrick, David Craig, Jerry Hubbard, Pat Rush, Fred Martin, and Little Feat founder Lowell George, whose "Dixie Chicken" features "vocals by everyone around in the studio, including friends and neighbors and the one and only Woody Lee Lewis." George is said to have singled out this version as his all-time favorite.

It's a live performance where you can fully enjoy Freddie's forcible blues guitar, a guitar that plays around.
From the intersection of tension and thrilling vocals and guitar, to the funky up-tempo numbers, it's bold and bold!

Guitarist T-Bone Walker is one of the most influential musicians in musical history. The Texan was one of the pioneers of the electric guitar and his recordings, made in the early 1940s for Capitol, Rhumboogie, and Black & White, are some of the earliest defining moments for electric blues. His playing was influential upon others of his era: most notably B.B. King but also several jazz players and many rock greats. He made a lot of records throughout his later career, some of variable quality. The less ground-breaking albums have often been overlooked; one of the best is his 1969 Bluestime LP Every Day I Have The Blues . Producer Bob Thiele took him to Capitol studios, teamed him up with some of the best session musicians and made a crisp, slightly funky masterpiece. There are great vocal performances, such as on the title track and Sail On , and his guitar sounds amazing on For B.B. King . This album didn t sell well, is difficult to find and is largely forgotten. This is its first reissue, and is taken from original master tapes. As a bonus Ace have added two tracks that were recorded at a 1970 show at the Carnegie Hall, New York.

This contains straight-up reissues of two of T-Bone's Imperial albums, themselves merely collections of the original 78s. Everything on these 24 sides was recorded between 1950 and 1954 – not as trailblazing a period as the one from 1946 to 1947 on Black and White, but still prime T-Bone by any yardstick. The majority of these sides were cut in Los Angeles, with the exception of the New Orleans-recorded "I'm Still in Love With You" and the Windy City cut of "Bye Bye Baby." Loads of great T-Bone guitar and a cool West Coast sound to most everything on here make this an important addition to anyone's blues collection.

If you're talking about packaging, the flaws of this disc are considerable. Comprised of 14 songs from 1960-1990 (most from 1960-71), the unifying theme is that all of them are taking from Houston recording sessions. But while recording dates and some personnel are noted, the original labels and dates of release are not. Furthermore, although the liner notes give a reasonable overview of Copeland's career, the tracks on this specific compilation are not discussed. And, putting the boot in, the cuts are not sequenced chronologically, but arranged almost as if someone had pressed the random button on a CD remote. Now, having aired all those complaints, the music is very good. These are fiery, committed performances in which the songs and arrangements often veer as much toward soul as toward blues. That's something that works to Copeland's advantage, both because he was versatile enough to combine styles well, and because it made him stand out from legions of other journeymen bluesmen.

Second Winter, Johnny Winter's second album for Columbia, originally had the distinction of being the only album in rock history that was a three-sided double LP. Musically, 35 years after its original release, Second Winter is still an oddity. Issued by Sony's Legacy division, the set has been painstakingly remastered, and expanded by bonus cuts and an entire disc of live material. It's too bluesed-out to be a pure rock record, and too psychedelically dimensioned to be a pure blues album. Tommy Shannon calls it "power blues." And as for whatever else passed for blues-rock at the time – Cream, Hendrix, Canned Heat, etc. – forget it. This set is a whole different animal. Cut in Nashville with all tracks begin done within one or two takes, the energy of Second Winter is undeniable. The sheer range of styles Winter assaulted in his restless quest is astonishing too.

Of the Three 'Kings' of the blues (BB, Albert and Freddy), Freddy King is perhaps the least well known these days. He enjoyed cross-over success with the white rock audiences of the 70s (hitting with albums for Cotillion, RSO and Shelter and touring extensively - his 'live' LP for German label Crosscut is about the closest thing to heavy metal blues imaginable). Yet his death from hepatitis in 1976 robbed Freddy of the kind of acclaim that the current blues revival has given BB, Albert and John Lee Hooker. There was a time, though, in the mid-'60s when his singles were among the most influential in blues, particularly for British and European audiences. His instrumental singles Hideaway and Drivin' Sideways were issued on Sue and covered by every white blues group that knew what was really happening on the R&B scene.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble: The Complete Epic Recordings Collection includes the group s original four studio albums, five electrifying live releases (including the commercial debut of A Legend In The Making Live At The El Mocambo, a rare Canadian radio promo album) and a double-disc set of killer studio outtakes from throughout Stevie Ray Vaughan s incredible career, including recordings from previous reissues, box sets and posthumous compilations.

This fabulous radio broadcast comes from The King's Head Inn, a tiny venue popular with students near the Old Dominion University campus, in Norfolk, Virginia, that could accommodate barely 100 people. Luckily, local radio station WNOR was on hand to preserve this storming performance made on July 20th 1980 by soon-to-become-legendary Blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Like everything on Memphis Slim's album Goin' Back to Tennessee or Alvin Youngblood Hart's "Tallacatcha" (a Western swing performance worthy of Bob Wills), Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown's 1975 Barclay album Down South in the Bayou Country completely transcends any and all attempts to confine this diverse artist within the artificial parameters of blues or any other preordained category. Consisting mostly of songs written by Hoyt Garrick, Jr., Charles Gressett, and David Craig with additional tunes by J. Loyd and Joe Stampley, this pretty parfait of country & western, Southern rock, cowboy hoedown, and electric Cajun soul music was recorded during February and March 1974 in Bogalusa, LA. Gatemouth, fresh from his tenure as Deputy Sheriff of San Juan County, NM, sounds particularly pleased to be active at the center of a project so completely infused with authentic Southern sensibilities. Perhaps the most satisfying track off of the original album is "Loup Garou." This hoodoo funk ritual with background vocals by Geraldine "Sister Gerry" Richard sounds as if it might have been influenced by Dr. John's "Loop Garoo," which had appeared on that artist's Atco album Remedies in 1970.