Beyond Mississippi: The Blues That Left Town

Performer: Various Artists
Producer: Joe Cushley (Compilation)
Distributor: Select-O-Hits

Notes: The exact concept of this two-CD set is hard to pin down, though it's certainly one of the most eclectic blues compilations on the market. The idea seems to have been to assemble off the beaten track blues of all kinds and all eras from the '20s through the early '00s without sticking to the expected iconic performers (though a few of them show up here anyway), and leaving room for inclusion of a lot of songs that are blues-influenced rather than straight blues. So in addition to getting standbys like Muddy Waters' "Rollin' and Tumblin'," Charley Patton's "A Spoonful Blues," and Skip James' "Devil Got My Woman," you have gospel-blues (the Golden Gate Quartet, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mahalia Jackson), white blues-rock (Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Dr. John, Dr. Feelgood), soul-blues (Albert King), bluesy jazz-pop-R&B (Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Cassandra Wilson), rock & rollers with blues roots (Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley), Tuvan throat singing blues (Paul Pena), prison work songs, 21st century performers like Corey Harris and Little Axe, and even blues satire in the form of the Bonzo Dog Band's "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?" It's rather like hearing an exceptionally varied and open-minded two-hour blues radio program, one that isn't afraid to upset the purists by putting as much weight on material that combines blues with other popular music genres as it does on purer strains of the form. That's not a bad thing, it just means that it might not fit as snugly into a niche as most blues compilations do. Though almost willfully idiosyncratic, the quality of the selections is pretty high, including some very good tunes that aren't overly familiar, like Dr. John's "Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya," Memphis Minnie's "I'm a Bad Luck Woman," Mahalia Jackson's "Consider Me," Howlin' Wolf's "Moaning at Midnight," Bo Diddley's "Heart-O-Matic Love," Van Morrison's "Who Drove the Red Sports Car?," Lightnin' Hopkins' "Jake Head Boogie," and Tommy Johnson's "Cool Drink of Water Blues." Some of the more unusual pleasures include Sister Rosetta Tharpe's "That's All," which collides big-band jazz with proto-rock & roll, Chuck Berry's "Deep Feeling," an instrumental with a Hawaiian feel, and George "Bongo Joe" Coleman's "Eloise," on which he accompanies himself only with an oil drum. And any anthology of any kind scores a coup by managing to license a Bob Dylan track, as this one does with the Sun Records-sounding "Dirt Road Blues," from his 1997 Time Out of Mind album. The annotation is pretty good, but the discographical information in the track listings is patchy and should have been better. ~ Richie Unterberger

Q (10/02, p.121) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Sticks fairly closely to traditional acoustic and electric formats...The occasional inclusion of hip-hop, gospel, jazz, soul and Caucasian mavericks add some interest and variety..."

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