Two Great Guitars (1964). Two Great Guitars is a studio album by Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, released in August 1964. It was the first studio album issued by Berry after his release from prison. The two men were friends, and both recorded for Chess. The album consists of two lengthy spontaneous instrumental jams plus a couple of recently recorded instrumentals by the two guitarists. The album cover shows a Gibson ES-350T owned by Berry and a guitar created by Diddley.
The Super Super Blues Band (1968). This is easily a "super super blues bust." Power trios, of course, were hip in the late '60s - even at down-home Chess Studios, where ad hoc "supergroups" were assembled for 1967's Super Blues and its sequel, Super Super Blues Band…

Born in Aberdeen, Mississippi, Chester Burnett, better known by his stage name Howlin' Wolf, helped modernize the country blues with his powerful vocal style and harmonica work and his ability to connect with an audience no matter what stage he prowled. His classic sides for Chess Records, several of which are collected here, including "Smokestack Lightnin'," "Sitting on Top of the World," "How Many More Years," and "Back Door Man," were instrumental in helping shape the classic sound of Chicago blues, which in turn helped shape everything that came after it.

When Willie Dixon left his native Mississippi and traveled north to Chicago, he almost single-handedly dragged the blues with him into the modern era, giving the country blues a hard, new sheen with his deft songwriting, sturdy bass playing, and his considerable talents as a producer and arranger. This two-disc, 47-track set catches Dixon wearing all of his hats, with the first disc featuring him in the studio and in concert (including several live tracks with Johnny Winter) and the second spotlighting his bass playing and production work with the likes of Robert Nighthawk, Eddie Boyd, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Lowell Fulson, Bo Diddley, Willie Mabon, and Howlin' Wolf. What emerges is a well-rounded portrait and introduction to one of the major architects of the modern blues sound.

Chester Arthur Burnett, known as Howlin' Wolf, was a Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player, originally from Mississippi. With a booming voice and looming physical presence, he is one of the best-known Chicago blues artists. Musician and critic Cub Koda noted, "no one could match Howlin' Wolf for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits." Producer Sam Phillips recalled, "When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I said, 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies'". Several of his songs, including "Smokestack Lightnin'", "Back Door Man", "Killing Floor" and "Spoonful", have become blues and blues rock standards. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 51 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time."

The title is a bit of a ringer, since this isn't a collaborative effort in any way, shape, or form. Muddy & the Wolf contains a half-dozen live Muddy Waters tracks with backing from Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and Otis Spann, the material culled from the Fathers & Sons sessions. The set also features tracks by Howlin' Wolf from his London sessions with Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr. File under "just OK."

This 45-song, two-disc collection is subtitled "two decades of killer fretwork", and never was a set so aptly described. Chess Records was the home to seemingly every hot guitar player in the Chicago area, and many of them make their appearance here. Besides the usual label guitar hotshots (Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Buddy Guy, Lowell Fulson, Earl Hooker, Otis Rush, Robert Nighthawk, Little Milton), space is given to sideman work from legends like Hubert Sumlin and Robert Jr. Lockwood and great one-offs by lesser-known artists like Jody Williams, Danny Overbea, Eddie Burns, Joe Hill Louis, Morris Pejoe, Lafayette Thomas and others. It seems as if everyone recorded for Chess at one time or another, also explaining the inclusion of tracks by John Lee Hooker, Albert King, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Lonnie Brooks, Hound Dog Taylor and Elmore James. If electric blues guitar's your thing, then look no further than this fine two-disc compilation.

Chester Arthur Burnett, known as Howlin' Wolf, was a Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player, originally from Mississippi. With a booming voice and looming physical presence, he is one of the best-known Chicago blues artists. Musician and critic Cub Koda noted, "no one could match Howlin' Wolf for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits." Producer Sam Phillips recalled, "When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I said, 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies'". Several of his songs, including "Smokestack Lightnin'", "Back Door Man", "Killing Floor" and "Spoonful", have become blues and blues rock standards. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 51 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time."

While both Bear Family sets deal with a largely unissued wealth of material, this collection is devoted in the main to all the Memphis recordings from 1951 and 1952 that saw the light of day on a number of Los Angeles-based labels owned by the Bihari Brothers, being issued and reissued and reissued again on a plethora of $1.98 budget albums. Featuring recordings done in Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service and surreptitious sessions recorded by a young Ike Turner in makeshift studios, these 18 sides are the missing piece of the puzzle in absorbing Wolf's early pre-Chess period. It also helps that this just happens to be some of the nastiest sounding blues ever recorded.

The 1972 live album Live and Cookin' at Alice's Revisited is a great document of Wolf toward the end, still capable of bringing the heat and rocking the house down to the last brick. Of special note are the wild and wooly takes on "I Had a Dream," "I Didn't Know," and Muddy Waters' "Mean Mistreater." There are mistakes galore out of the band and some P.A. system feedback here and there, both of which only add to the charm of it all. A compact-disc reissue added two stellar bonus cuts. The first one, "Big House," first showed up on a hodge-podge Wolf bootleg album from the '70s. Its non-appearance on the original album is somewhat of a mystery since it's arguably one of the best performances here./quote]