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Ironically, it took a European record company to compile The Memphis Blues Box, one of the most impressive and essential collections of American music you’ll ever find. Still, I can’t think of a label more suited to the task than Germany’s Bear Family, which is world-famous for its gargantuan and definitive anthologies, such as the 13-disc …Next Stop Is Vietnam/The War on Record: 1961–2008 and the 10-disc The Bakersfield Sound 1940–1994.
A note from compiler and curator Martin Hawkins says it took 13 years to assemble The Memphis Blues Box. You’ll believe that when you see it. One can only imagine the time and effort needed to track down the 534 vinyl and pre-vinyl singles in this 20-CD anthology, many of which are rare; garner permissions to use them; and restore the audio to the point where the lion’s share of these vintage recordings sound as if they were made last week.
Then there’s the set’s LP-sized, 360-page hardcover book, for which Bear Family gathered nearly 900 photos and illustrations, many previously unpublished, plus profiles of every artist and discographic information and notes on every track. Also in the book are many insightful essays with titles like “Memories of Blues and Beale,” “The Golden Age of the Independent Record Companies,” and “The Story of Furry Lewis.” The music has a playing time of more than 25 hours, and it will undoubtedly take you even longer to digest everything in the book.
While the text and photos are terrific, the CDs are, of course, the main attraction here. And what an attraction they are! Memphis is widely known as the “home of the blues,” but it also played a role in the development of rockabilly, soul, jazz, country, jug band, and R&B; in addition, it is where Sam Phillips helped to launch the careers of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and other prominent early rockers. You’ll hear elements of all those styles in this box.
However, compiler Hawkins had to set some parameters to limit the anthology to a mere 20 CDs. The goal, he says in an introduction to the book, was to “present the music of Memphis that was recorded and marketed as blues in its day, year on year.” As such, he notes, the program includes some early jazz and R&B, hillbilly blues, and rockabilly but not blues recordings made outside the Memphis area by Memphis-related composers and musicians. While Robert Johnson was partly raised in the city, for example, he mostly recorded elsewhere and is therefore not featured. Still, the box—whose subtitle is Original Recordings First Released on 78s and 45s, 1914–1969—is mindbogglingly comprehensive: it credibly claims to include “at least one side of every relevant single disc” issued during the covered period.
Though the material is mostly arranged chronologically, the program opens with some spoken 1952 memories from W.C. Handy, the self-described Father of the Blues. Then come recordings from early in the last century by Handy, the Memphis Jug Band, Williamson’s Beale Street Frolic Orchestra, and other pioneers. Nineteen discs later, the musical journey ends with late-’60s efforts by such artists as Ike & Tina Turner, Albert King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Junior Parker.
Those aren’t the only names here that blues fans will recognize. For example, the set includes 14 tracks from B.B. King, 12 from Howlin’ Wolf, 20 from Memphis Minnie, four from Bukka White, 10 from Rufus Thomas, and 12 from Sleepy John Estes. A few early Sun Records efforts by Presley and Perkins are here, too.
But have you heard of the Swift Jewel Cowboys, whose fine 1939 recording of Handy’s “Memphis Blues” seems influenced by New Orleans Dixieland jazz? How about Billy Garner’s raunchy 1961 rendition of “Little School Girl,” Billy Love’s sax-spiced “You’re Gonna Cry,” or Cannon’s Jug Stompers’ 1928 reading of “Viola Lee Blues” (with vocals and harmonica by composer Noah Lewis), which was later recorded by artists ranging from Sonny Boy Williamson to the Grateful Dead? Little-known treasures await your discovery on each of this collection’s 20 discs.
As you might imagine, the price tag for this box is big. The rewards for exploring its contents, however, are far bigger.
Also Noteworthy
Tom Russell Band, Live by the River 1993. Tom Russell has ranked among America’s greatest folk singer/songwriters for about half a century now, so if you don’t know his work, you have lots of catching up to do. This well-recorded live set is as good a place to start as any. Recorded in Italy in 1993 with a three-man band that included long-time associate Andy Hardin on guitar as well as a bassist and a drummer, the nine-song set features spirited renditions of some of Russell’s best and best-known compositions.
Among them are a richly detailed character portrait called “The Angel of Lyon”; “Outbound Plane,” a poignant song about a failed love affair that Russell co-wrote with the late Nanci Griffith; “St. Olav’s Gate,” a colorful vignette about a drunken man waiting alone at midnight for a woman who doesn’t show up; “Black Pearl,” which showcases a guest accordionist; and “Gallo del Cielo” (featured below in a studio version) about a man who bets everything on a fighting rooster. Also, “Haley’s Comet,” a co-write with Dave Alvin about early rocker Bill Haley, who, years after his heyday, finds himself in a pancake house where he asks the waitress, “Do you know who I am?” Her reply: “I don’t know you from diddley / To me you look like one more tired old man.”
Buy this record but be forewarned: after you do, you’ll likely want to seek out the approximately three dozen other albums that Russell has released during his long career.
The Ink Spots, The Hits Collection, 1939–1951. If you’re not familiar with the Ink Spots, you obviously weren’t alive and listening to the radio between around 1939 and 1951. That’s when this pioneering gospel- and jazz-influenced pop/R&B/doo-wop vocal quartet from Indianapolis scored hit after hit and helped pave the road to early rock. In fact, it had so many chart successes that this 48-track collection can’t contain them all.
The well-annotated, two-disc set does, however, embrace the original versions of all the Ink Spots’ Top 10 R&B singles and Top 30 pop singles. Among them are such smashes as “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano,” “Maybe,” “We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me),” “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,“ “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall,” “I’m Making Believe,” “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” “The Gypsy,” and “To Each His Own.”
