John Lee Hooker • Burning Hell Riverside/Craft Recordings CR00657 Lightnin' Hopkins and Sonny Terry • Last Night Blues Prestige/Craft Recordings CR00746 Skip James • Skip James Today! Vanguard/Craft Recordings CR00744 Albert King • Live Wire/Blues Power Stax/Craft Recordings CR00745
've reviewed a few of Craft Recordings' Original Jazz Classics (OJC) LPs, a series from 1982 that was relaunched and improved in 2022. The original Original Jazz Classics series grew to hundreds of titles on LP and even more on CD, spanning recordings from many important labels, including Prestige, Riverside, and Fantasy; and music from the likes of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and many other jazz notables. While OJC was created to provide high-quality budget-priced LPs, the mid-priced reissues I reviewed practically oozed audiophile cred. Kevin Gray remastered the new OJC LPs from the master tapes, and RTI pressed the 180-gram LPs, each housed in a glossy Stoughton-printed tip-on jacket. Craft has remained busy, continuing to drop new OJC releases at a steady pace and launching a series of important blues LPs, dubbed Bluesville, in 2024, from which these four titles come. Original Jazz Classics and Bluesville are both similar to and different from each other. Like OJC, Bluesville draws from Craft's deep roster of labels and recordings. Unlike for the OJC series, Craft consulted an insider who is also an aficionado of the blues: Chad Kassem, head of Acoustic Sounds and Analogue Productions. "We help pick titles," he told me. Kassem has deep love of and support for the blues, not just via his own Analogue Productions reissues but his Blue Heaven Studios, a church converted into a recording studio and performance hall where Kassem hosted a yearly blues festival. If you're going to consult with someone on a series of blues reissues, Chad Kassem is the guy. In the blues world, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Skip James and Albert King -- all from Mississippi -- are royalty, though, as with their jazz counterparts, their music is not homogeneous by any means. These are very different recordings, the perfect foursome with which to begin the Bluesville series, which also includes titles from Jimmy Reed, Buddy Guy, Mississippi John Hurt, Memphis Slim, Lonnie Johnson, Reverend Gary Davis, and others. With this lineup and the care that has gone into the finished products, Bluesville aims to be the equal of Original Jazz Classics. Burning Hell was one of John Lee Hooker's earliest recordings, but it was not released until the 1960s, and then only in the UK. And for some inexplicable reason, its US release waited until 1992. Its simple musical formula -- just Hooker and his acoustic guitar -- puts the songs center stage. His guitar sound is angular and a touch ragged, the combination ideal for Hooker's countrified take on the blues. There are many Hooker originals here, along with covers of tunes written by or associated with Muddy Waters ("Smokestack Lightnin'"), Lightnin' Hopkins ("Baby Please Don't Go"), and Howlin' Wolf ("Natchez Fire"). Burning Hell is some of the least adorned, most direct Delta blues from the late 1950s. The minimal ensemble of Lightnin' Hopkins on acoustic guitar, Sonny Terry on harmonica, and light percussion, gives Last Night Blues much of its charm. The stripped-down title tune waits until the open of side two -- underscoring its slow-boil intensity. The sound is clear and direct, perfect for such direct and uncomplicated music. This is a recording to lean into, so you don't miss a single word, strum or beat. Skip James's high falsetto vocals and unusual guitar tunings came to define the Bentonia School, named for James's home town of Bentonia, Mississippi. On Today!, James plays guitar or piano, his vocals adding a haunting quality to each cut. I hear echoes of honky-tonk and the country blues of Doc Watson in tunes such as "How Long," although without Watson's low grumble. This is a special recording, with a nearly other-worldly performance. James's vocals and guitar were sometimes imitated but never equaled. Albert King's playing influenced a Texas blues legend, Stevie Ray Vaughan. Both possessed a deep, rich, powerful tone on electric guitar, spiced with bent-string flourishes. I sometimes thought I was hearing a Vaughan lick during this live recording from the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Of the six cuts, five are King originals, the only cover being "Watermelon Man," a jazz hit from Herbie Hancock. King's fierce playing might embrace the flower power of late-1960s San Francisco, but this recording illustrates just how readily blues guitar translated to rock 'n' roll -- then and now. Matthew Luthans used the original tapes to master the LPs at The Mastering Lab, Blue Heavens Studios' mastering facility, and Quality Record Pressings pressed the LPs. Chad Kassem: "We oversee the production, including the mastering and helping source the right jackets, doing everything we can to ensure these records look and sound like if they were from Analogue Productions." It worked -- the jackets are beautiful, including the obi-like strips with short informative blurbs about each record. The 180-gram pressings are incredibly quiet, and the sound is clear and up front. The various recording venues (including Rudy Van Gelder's studio for Last Night Blues) sound distinct, and you hear all of the differences with ease.
The message Craft Recordings sends with the Bluesville
series is simple: follow us and we'll lead you to important music. In this regard, these
titles deliver as monumentally as any of the OJC titles I've reviewed. If you want to
immerse yourself in the blues, these four LPs accomplish that, while also providing an
overview of styles, both vocal and instrumental. |
