Various Artists - Masters Of Memphis Blues 4 x CDs 4 x CDs (due to weight, this price for the USA only. Outside of the USA, the price will be adjusted as needed) (Mega Blowout Sale)
SKU
23-JSP 77139
“Beale Street was the street. Black man's street. More slickers come off Beale Street than come out of New York. So many slick people came from down that way, learnt how to gamble, learnt how to con, how to cheat, from down in that part of the country. And Beale Street was the main line.” - Muddy Waters
“If ever there was a good time, so help me God, there was good times on Beale Street. People from everywhere was coming to find out about that place. People you see there you ain't ever seen before in your life. You know, Beale Street was a joint street, it was a drag street, it was a drawing street.” - Booker White
In the old days on Beale, you could say it was never night-time. They just stayed open from dawn to dawn. Everything was lively. You go to playing at five o'clock, play until five-thirty in the morning. There was all kinds of different places on Beale. To tell the truth, some of them was just real scalawag joints.” - John 'Piano Red' Williams
“This is an excellent 4 CD collection featuring the complete early recordings of Memphis bluesmen Frank Stokes, Furry Lewis, Robert Wilkins (later the Reverend Robert Wilkins) and a few others.
These recordings, circa 1927 -1934, by Frank Stokes (including the Beale Street Sheiks recordings by Stokes and Sain), Furry Lewis and Robert Wilkins are all well known among blues fans. As one example, the Rolling Stones covered Robert Wilkins' Prodigal Son on their 1968 Beggars Banquet album. Prodigal Son is a re-working of Wilkins' That's No Way To Get Along, which appears on this collection. Wilkins changed the lyrics of That's No Way To Get Along into the lyric of Prodigal Son after he became an ordained minister in 1935.
All these recordings by Stokes, Stokes and Sain, Lewis and Wilkins are worth having if you're a blues fan and this collection is a cost effective way of getting them. Individual CDs featuring these recordings by each artist individually typically sell for about $20 each, so it would cost about $80+ to get these recordings on individual CDs. This collection is currently selling in the $30 range.
The re-mastering for this collection is good. The sound is good.
Overall, a very cost effective way to get the complete 1927-1930 recordings of three influential Memphis bluesmen.”