Ry Cooder's exceptional Paradise and Lunch takes a popular precept – music as the common denominator across all languages and styles – to extremes few artists have envisioned let alone fulfilled. Considered by many diehards to be the California native's finest hour, the 1974 set unfurls with rarified levels of joyousness, ingenuity, and sophistication. A prime contender for any Desert Island list and an album that repeatedly restores your faith in the inimitable effects experienced upon listening to special performances, Paradise and Lunch is an eternal "musicians' musician" record – an adventurous, ambitious, soulful leap down roads well-traveled and paths less known. Such eclecticism, virtuosity, and ebullience resonate with unmatched verve on our hybrid SACD. Mastered from the original master tapes and strictly limited to 2000 numbered copies, this audiophile reissue boasts dead-quiet surfaces, superb transient response, front-to-back soundstaging, and an organic immediacy that heightens the enjoyment, character, and craft of the arrangements.

This disc by John Mooney stretches his boundaries without compromising his music at all. He adds some New Orleans rhythm & blues/funk to the solid, deep Delta blues foundation on which his music is based. It works yet he doesn't seem quite comfortable with it all yet even though he wrote nine of the 13 songs (some of his strongest songs yet). Of course, he has enlisted some of the finest, such as Dr. John to plink the ivories, and some friendly familiar faces like Jeff Sarli on bass, to assist him in this endeavor. This is more a group-orientated effort and it is excellent in that respect, however, that means Mooney's guitar work is not as prominent in the mix and, thus, it requires more attention by the listener because he has not lost any of his ferocity at all. His guitar playing is some of the most savage and ferocious ever. A big plus on this disc is Mooney's singing because he is sounding more comfortable each time out and he has a voice perfectly matched in passion to the raw and fervid nature of his Delta-based material.

John Mooney is a slide guitarist, working primarily in a traditionalist Delta acoustic style. Originally hailing from Rochester, NY, Mooney learned his craft first hand from country blues legend Son House. Later in his career, he moved to New Orleans, switched to electric guitar and began enlivening his music with Second Line rhythms indigenous to the area. In 1976, Mooney relocated to New Orleans and within a year of his arrival, he landed a contract with Blind Pig. In 1979, he released his debut album, Comin' Your Way.

Blues on the South Side is probably the best album slide guitarist Homesick James ever laid down (originally for Prestige in 1964). The stylistic similarities to his cousin, the great Elmore James, are obvious, but Homesick deviates repeatedly from the form. Tough as nails with a bottleneck, he goes for the jugular on "Goin' Down Swingin'", "Johnny Mae", and "Gotta Move", supported by pianist Lafayette Leake, guitarist Eddie Taylor, and drummer Clifton James.

The 2010 issue of Mississippi Blues by Sonny Landreth on the Fuel 2000 imprint is not a new album, nor is it a representative compilation of his oeuvre. In fact, the set is a complete repackage of the album entitled The Crazy Cajun Recordings originally issued on CD by Great Britain’s Edsel in 1999. The material dates from 1973 and 1977, recorded with the famed Huey P. Meaux (aka the Crazy Cajun) when he wasn’t touring with Clifton Chenier as part of his Red Hot Louisiana Band. These 20 tracks range from Landreth’s Lafayette, LA-styled take on the acoustic Delta blues solo and with a band that included a mandolin player, an electric bassist, and a drummer to his early electric experiments playing a meld of Cajun-flavored soul, rock, and R&B. The electric slide guitar fury evidenced on his own records from the 1980s onward is all but absent here, but the acoustic slide work is particularly plentiful – check his reading of “I Know You Rider,” “Lazy Boy,” and the stomping “Prodigal Son”.

Bluesman John Mooney has a very appealing tone in his slide guitar work, a relatively strong voice and, by varying moods, subject matter and grooves, he put together a particularly strong program for his Bullseye Blues debut. Influenced by both the country blues and country music, Mooney's guitar acts as both a contrasting and a complementary voice to his vocals, sometimes functioning in unison and other times as an equal partner in a musical "conversation." Enjoyable music.

One of the best recordings in Chess Records' 50th Anniverary series is the first of two bookend Muddy Waters collections, His Best 1947-55. Documenting Waters's most creatively and commercially successful years at Aristocrat/Chess, this collection begins with his formative years and ends with Waters at his peak. So you're in for a lot of terrific bottleneck slide guitar work as well as electric Chicago blues; what's to criticize? Superb remasterings of "I Can't Be Satisfied", "Rollin' and Tumblin'," "I'm Ready", and "Mannish Boy" are simply beyond reproach. With simple bass accompaniment from Ernest "Big" Crawford, Waters's bottleneck tracks are spare, haunting and, quite frankly, perfect country blues. And listening to Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon, and Jimmy Rogers piece together (and perfect very quickly) the classic Chicago sound is pure blues epiphany. At the very least, this collection shows you why Waters's rollicking stop-time classics like "Mannish Boy" and "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" have sparked endless imitations over the years–and why nobody has played them better since.

Following a few years after Levee Town, an album tightly focused on a specific place and time, Landreth dedicates The Road We're On to the more intangible magic of the blues. The music this time scans a vast panorama, from the Texas shuffle of "All About You" and zydeco pulse of "Gone Pecan" through the tub-thump beat of some Bayou dive on "Juke Box Mamma." Aside from a couple of cuts on which he plays standard guitar, Landreth fills this album with wizardly slide work: A shimmering lick at the end of "A World Away" provides the most gorgeous sonic moment, though his extended jam on the environmental call to arms "Natural World" sustains a high level of intensity through several choruses. On most of these tracks Landreth performs in a raw trio setting, almost all the time recording live; on "Hell at Home" he even keeps the scratch vocal, rather than overdub a fresh version, because the four-beat groove, reminiscent of "Walking Blues" on Paul Butterfield's East-West, is so in-the-pocket.

Guitarist, singer, and songwriter John Campbell had the potential of turning a whole new generation of people onto the blues in the 1990s, much the same way Stevie Ray Vaughan did in the '80s. His vocals were so powerful and his guitar playing so fiery, you couldn't help but stop what you were doing and pay attention to what you were hearing. But unfortunately, because of frail health and a rough European tour, he suffered a heart attack in his sleep on June 13, 1993, at the age of 41. Collection includes: A Man And His Blues (1988); One Believer (1991); Howlin Mercy (1993).

Collection includes: 'Ry Cooder' (1970) # 7599-27510-2, 'Into the Purple Valley' (1971) # 7599-27200-2, 'Boomer's Story' (1972) # 7599-26398-2.

Japanese pressing of the blues legend's 2004 album includes one bonus track 'Headed For Hard Times'. The album is a mixture of original songs and covers of blues standards. As the album's title suggests, the songs have strong emphasis on traditional electric blues over the blues-rock elements on some previous Winter albums. I'm a Bluesman was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

There's something fun and catchy about Michael Messer's eclectic album, King Guitar. Although the guitar featured on the cover is a vintage acoustic model, the music runs the gauntlet between down-and-dirty electric blues and quiet Delta slide. In a way, this mixture is sort of like an early Fleetwood Mac, with Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer bringing different blues styles together in one group. Messer, however, accomplishes all of this by himself. His acoustic slide guitar is the epitome of taste on the lovely "Crow Blues" and the happy, upbeat "Steel Guitar Blues".

Widespread respect for Earl Hooker, one of the unsung giants of the blues, is long overdue, and his rather limited available discography belies a great original talent. P-Vine Japan has attempted to put this right with Blues Guitar: The Chief and Age Sessions 1959-1963, an intelligent and authoritative collection of Hooker's early-'60s heyday, containing instrumental classics such as "Blue Guitar" and "Blues in D Natural." Both sound quality and packaging supersede all previous reissues of this work and, as such, this release becomes perhaps the cornerstone of any Earl Hooker collection.

This 2CD set contains the A and B side of every 78 and 45 released in the period 1952 to 1962. It features original releases from Trumpet, Meteor, Flair, Checker, Modern, Chief, Vee Jay, Fire and Enjoy. The recordings were produced mainly in Chicago and New York with others made in Mississippi, New Orleans and Los Angeles and constitutes as formidable a body of work as could be found anywhere in blues history.

Michael Messer is a virtuoso slide guitarist who has one of the best bands performing some of the greatest blues tunes produced this century. His playing encompasses the entire history of the blues but is totally individual and contemporary. His use of turntables in the band adds a new element to the music and Messer s haunting vocals ooze authenticity and integrity. The American magazine, Spirit listed Michael as one of the greatest slide guitarists ever alongside Duane Allman and Ry Cooder. Re-issue of his rare 1996 album.