The Rough Guide to Country Blues

Give this album the roughly five minutes it takes to run down the first two tracks – the deeply harrowing ‘Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues' by Skip James and Blind Willie McTell's prodigiously swinging ‘Georgia Rag’ – and there is no way the listener won't sit still for the remaining 23 selections comprising this new compilation from Neil Record and the Rough Guide gang. Some of the contributors are familiar to casual blues fans, including the aforementioned James and McTell, Bukka White, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Memphis Minnie, Furry Lewis and Leadbelly. Others, not so well-known – Barbecue Bob, Clarence Greene, Dick Justice – belong among the pantheon of artists (mostly black, some white) who pioneered a multi-faceted acoustic genre that eventually become country blues.

Culled from 78rpm recordings made in the 1920s and 30s, these restored and remastered studio sessions, in almost every case, represent an exceptional performance by the featured artist. From Geeshie Wiley's grimly fascinating ‘Last Kind Word Blues’ to Blind Willie Johnson's floorstomping, slide-guitar shimmying masterpiece, ‘God Moves on the Water’, The Rough Guide to Country Blues provides an enthralling, tantalising glimpse into a world of powerful, transcendent, roots music-making.