With his simple, accessible sound and signature laid-back style, JIMMY REED was just about the most commercially successful Blues artist in the USA during the 50s and 60s.

This was Jimmy's best selling album ever but the title is very misleading in that these are all studio recordings, not live recordings, which means they weren't recorded at Carnegie Hall, but the tracks are in the order he performed them at a Carnegie Hall concert one week prior to recording the first dozen in the studio of this double album. This is actually the first time all of the original master tapes of this album were used as the songs recorded in mono were on all previous issues in rechanneled stereo while the true stereo tracks on this disc have always been in true stereo on every release. Steve Hoffman searched high and low for the first generation tapes of each song on the album in the Vee Jay vaults and as a result, Audio Fidelity has issued the definitive release of the album. Audiophiles and casual blues fans who like quality sound must pick up this issue of Jimmy Reed At Carnegie Hall as it contains most of his biggest hits in the best possible quality sound due to the work of Steve Hoffman.

In several respects, this is a very strange album, though the music isn't strange at all and is in fact quite typical vintage Jimmy Reed. First, despite what the title might lead you to believe, this is not a live recording; all 23 of the tracks were done in the studio. Not only that, they weren't even performed at New York's famed venue Carnegie Hall, although producer Calvin Carter would later claim they were; instead, everything was cut elsewhere.
According to Pete Welding's notes to the record in the year (1961) the double LP was first issued, one-half is devoted to "recreations of some of Jimmy's most celebrated and biggest-selling recordings," while "the second LP here is Jimmy's celebratory recreation of his highly successful appearance at august Carnegie Hall this past May"…