New Millennium Blues Party

Performer: Various Artists
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Compilation producers: James Austin, Garson Foos. Includes liner notes by Bill Dahl and James Austin. Digitally remastered by Bob Fisher (Pacific Multimedia Corp). Audio Remasterer: Bob Fisher . Rhino's New Millennium Blues Party might as well be titled Blues' Greatest Hits. Its 20 tracks cover some of the most popular blues songs of (mostly) the latter half of the 20th century, and correspondingly, there's an enormously wide range of styles and approaches, from Chicago grit to slick blues-pop. Even though the variety does keep things interesting, it's also kind of jarring to jump from Robert Cray to Susan Tedeschi to Muddy Waters to George Thorogood to Jonny Lang, one right after the other. It does help, though, that the collection is packed with classic blues singles: Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy," Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lightning," Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign," B.B. King's "The Thrill Is Gone," and John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom." There are a couple of odd artist/song matchups -- "Johnny B. Goode" performed by Johnny Winter? -- but overall, for a basic, hit-laden blues primer, you could do a lot worse than New Millennium Blues Party. ~ Steve Huey

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