Blues Routes: Heroes & Tricksters (1999)

About this title: Seventeen live performances on this blues compilation, drawn from 1990-95 recordings that were done for the Folk Masters series distributed by Public Radio International; all of these were recorded at either the Barns of Wolf Trap or Carnegie Hall. There's a lot of variety and numerous styles represented: work songs, folksy songsters, modern electric blues (Joe Louis Walker does an eight-minute "Bluesifyin"), Delta-styled blues (Robert Jr. Lockwood), piano jazz-blues, and more. It's adventurous enough to go off into some detours that aren't strictly blues, but certainly blues-related, as in ... read more

Tracks:

1. Rooster Call
2. John Henry [Traditional]
3. Step It up and Go [Long]
4. Flippin' and Floppin' [Johnson]
5. Twenty-Four Hours a Day [Levine/Leake]
6. Little Queen of Spades [Johnson]
7. One Dime Blues [Public Domain]
8. Blue Tail Fly
9. Gut Bucket Blues [Armstrong]
10. That Certain Someone [Williams]
11. Harlem Parlor Blues [Price]
12. Early in the Morning [Hickman/Jordan/Bart]
13. Sew, Sew, Sew
14. My Mind Has No Color/Doing It the Go-Go Way [Jones]
15. Hambone, Where You Been?
16. Uncle Bud [Chavis]
17. Bluesifyin' [Walker]

Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is further described below.