Side A
Artist	Song
Mississippi Fred McDowell	61 Highway
Robert Johnson	Cross Road Blues
Robert Nighthawk	Someday
Sunnyland Slim	She Ain't Nowhere
Johnny "Shoeshine" Shines	30 Days In Jail
Sonny Boy Williamson II	Trust Me Baby
"Blind" Joe Reynolds	Ninety Nine Blues
Howlin' Wolf	You'll Be Mine
Dr. Ross	Decoration Day
Muddy Waters	I Be's Troubled
Big Joe Williams	Please Don't Go
Bukka White	Good Gin Blues
Elmore James	Can't Stop Loving My Baby
Earl Hooker	Frog Hop
Howlin' Wolf	All Night Boogie
Hound Dog Taylor	Sitting Home Alone
Skip James	Be Ready When He Comes
T-Model Ford	Sail On
R.L. Burnside	Goin' Down South
Son House	Death Letter
Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup	Crudup's After Hours
Charley Patton	34 Blues
Muddy Waters	They Call Me Muddy Waters
[bonus] Nas ft. Olu Dara	Bridging The Gap
download	CD ONE
Side B
Artist	Song	Buy
Johnny "Shoeshine" Shines	Death Hearse Blues (Alt.)
Bukka White	Parchman Farm Blues
"22" with axe group	It Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad
Son House	Downhearted Blues
John Lee Hooker	Crawlin' King Snake
Mississippi Fred McDowell	I Wish I Was In Heaven Sittin' Down
Robert Johnson	Stop Breakin' Down Blues
Skip James	Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues
Tommy Johnson	Canned Heat Blues
Big Joe Williams	Highway 49
Charley Patton	Down The Dirt Road Blues
Sonny Boy Williamson II	Your Funeral And My Trial
R.L. Burnside	Rolling And Tumbling
Robert Belfour	Black Mattie
Junior Kimbrough	Do The Romp
Mississippi John Hurt	Wise And Foolish Virgins (Tender Virgins)
Johnny "Shoeshine" Shines	Down In Spirit
Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup	I Don't Know It
Muddy Waters	I Can't Be Satisfied
Howlin' Wolf	Sittin' On Top Of The World
Big Jack Johnson	Driving Wheel
Robert Nighthawk	Black Angel Blues (Sweet Black Angel)
John Lee Hooker	Stomp Boogie
Chris Thomas King with James Cotton	Come On In My Kitchen
download	CD TWO

Comment:

The Mississippi Delta was the Cradle of Life for the blues. After the Civil War, many freed slaves became sharecroppers, living in miserable shacks and working the cotton fields for a pittance, with half their production or more going to the landowners. Jim Crow laws made it easy for blacks to be arrested for the slightest infraction of the 'law', and in the Delta those convicts were sent to Parchman Farm where they were often worked to death in the prison's fields in an institutionalized form of slavery. This was the reality of life in the south at the time, and it was in the fields and prisons that the blues began.

Yet the sharecroppers had one important thing - hope. They were free, and sharecropping meant they could move on, going from farm to farm, working North. In the Delta, Highway 61 represented this hope: Highway 61 led to Memphis, and Memphis led to Chicago. And it was this path that the blues followed, spreading out and influencing ALL music. The blues is where it all began, from rock to rap. And Delta blues was the start.

Placing Delta blues as a style is dificult. The original players were invariably acoustic, sometimes guitar, sometimes harmonica. But what separates Delta blues from hill country blues? I certainly don't know. Many Delta bluesmen migrated to Chicago and Detroit. Performers like Bukka White and Muddy Waters started in the Delta and later defined the Chicago sound. So where to draw the line... if it exists at all? But this mix isn't a history lesson, even though I've represented its history quite thoroughly here, from the late Twenties to today. Some purists might scoff at my selections. But this IS Delta blues to me. And it's rough and dirty, and absolutely my favorite style of music. Listen to Delta blues, and you'll hear the seeds of modern music.

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