Thoroughly entertaining downhome blues, intricate ragtime, hokum and instrumental guitar stomps.

The greatest gospel bluesman; one of the very greatest bottle-neck guitarists.
Almost overwhelmingly intense and gripping.

Sparkling, uproarious ragtime and blues — randy, porno and ooh-er — with Sidney Bechet, Bessie Smith and Jelly Roll Morton.
Lucille “got-fat-from-fuckin” Bogan is the filthiest of the lot: “I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb, I got somethin’ between my legs’ll make a dead man come.”

Stokes, Memphis Minnie, Furry Lewis, Gus Cannon and co. 180g, well-pressed.

Bumptious sauce recorded for Paramount in 1929 by different lineups including Leroy Carr, Scrapper Blackwell, Tampa Red and Blind Blake, and Bob Robinson on banjo and clarinet. Archetypal Crumb; 180g.

45s and LPs spanning the period 1964-1973, including his long-lost album debut. The original material here trumps the folk chestnuts. Alasdair Roberts does Lord Randall a lot better, has to be said.

‘To hear fully the subtlety in Furry’s singing is to gain an insight not only into the singer, but into the creative process of the blues itself,’ wrote Sam Charters. Vocalions and Victors by the Memphis legend.

Excellent compilation of country blues, 1933-39.
Bo Carter, Scrapper Blackwell, Walter Davis, Black Ace… and less well-known names, like Peanut The Kidnapper and One Arm Slim.
‘One Arm Slim’s piano is rather erratic due to the fact that he is probably using only one hand,’ according to the sleevenotes.

‘The trance blues stylings of Otha Turner and his Rising Star Fife And Drum Band should be a music classification unto itself, a whole new primitive take on drum and bass. This music is the oldest still-practiced post-colonial American music, and Turner was one of its greatest artists of the 20th century. Blowing the cane fife with a band of drummers as back up, The Rising Star Fife And Drum band was legendary in the hills of Tate County, Mississippi, where they would perform during the yearly goat picnics on Turner’s farm. These tracks were recorded by Luther Dickinson during such picnics and released when Turner was ninety years old. Everybody Hollerin’ Goat shows firsthand the hypnotic and rhythmic style of fife and drum music at its best — raw and beautiful. It is every bit as essential a document of America’s folk-music heritage as anything Harry Smith or Alan Lomax ever offered up for posterity. This first ever vinyl release of Everybody Hollerin’ Goat contains a whole side of unreleased recordings from one night of the picnic and is intended to bring the experience of hollerin’ for goat in Senatobia, Mississippi to the living room. Dancing around the plants is recommended (but don’t eat the pickled eggs).’