Putumayo Presents: Mississippi Blues

Synopsis

More than Chicago, its electric home, or Detroit and Memphis, where it morphed into modern soul, Mississippi is the blues. But, like every musical form, the blues have evolved since the days Charley Patton lived on Dockery's Plantation and played house dances and juke joints around Clarksdale. And that very evolution is going to make any collection called Mississippi Blues problematic. To many, Mississippi is associated with the acoustic Delta blues. To a younger generation, it's the raw electric artists of Mississippi hill country who appear on the Fat Possum label (and who are essentially unrepresented here). To be fair, the compilers do their best in a thankless job. From the early generation, listeners get Memphis Minnie, Memphis Slim, and Mississippi John Hurt (notably a cut from his '60s rediscovery). Slightly later come Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup -- one of Elvis Presley's inspirations, with his big, laid-back voice -- some relatively early Ike & Tina Turner, John Lee Hooker (an odd choice; although his roots were in Clarksdale, his work didn't begin until he was up north in Detroit), and the wonderful Bobby "Blue" Bland, with a take on the classic "St. James Infirmary." There is one young inclusion, happily, in the rising Chris Thomas King. But where's Muddy Waters, whose first work was recorded down in the Delta in the early '40s? Where are Robert Johnson and Charley Patton, whose styles epitomize and define early blues? Where's Junior Kimbrough or R.L. Burnside? This is a fair collection which tries to bill itself as "a musical journey down the Mississippi River," but with just 11 tracks, it can't touch on nearly enough. ~ Chris Nickson