Various Artists: The Rough Guide to Unsung Heroes of Country Blues
Don’t feel bad if you’re a blues fanatic but you’ve never heard of most of the artists collected on this 24-song roundup of acoustic recordings from the late 1920s and early ‘30s. The compilers, too, readily admit that this is some seriously obscure stuff. “Very little is known about many of these featured early blues artists, other than the simple fact that their classic recordings are like arrows through time and have a cutting edge coolness which defies the age in which they were recorded,” states the liner notes. And that’s what makes these antiques so intriguing: Listening for the first time is akin to discovering several new species of birds in a jungle previously thought to be thoroughly decimated. These are mostly raw and rough, both musically and sonically, these sides by the likes of Texas Alexander, Lane Hardin and Lottie Kimbrough, yet they’re familiar, too—the guitar picking and keening vocals are not dissimilar to what’s long been available to modern-day listeners by other blues pioneers. While some of the songs, including “Tain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do” (Frank Stokes) and “Roll and Tumble Blues” (Hambone Willie Newbern), have been heard before by others, it’s fascinating to know that these “lost” versions were evasive for so long—and to wonder how many more are still out there.