Down Home Blues Chicago Volume 2.

Deluxe 5 CD Set with 94 Page Book.
Out 19 July 2019.

By Paul Davies

Down Home Blues: Sweet Home Chicago (WNRCD5106) is the second volume of Chicago Blues post war down home blues music from Wienerworld, recorded from the mid-1940s through the golden decade years of the 1950s up to the early 1960s
 
A five CD set, packaged in a deluxe digipak with an outer slip case, featuring 135 tracks all remastered and including alternate takes of well-known recordings. All unissued and alternate take records are from Peter Moody’s private collection, many of which are otherwise unavailable 

Features 46 artists who were influential in developing the Chicago blues scene including Elmore James, Howling Wolf and Jimmy Rogers. Includes early down home blues recordings from Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley just before they were on the cusp of taking their music into the new big world of rock and roll
 
Includes an outstanding 94 page book, featuring a new essay by renowned blues historian Mike Rowe on the post war Chicago scene; over fifty rare period photographs illustrate the essay throughout; full track details, as well as full sessionography. A feature page section on some of the artists and a five page gallery of original 78 and 45 record labels
 Features eight unique unpublished photos:
Chuck Berry (inside cover), Johnnie Johnson (p.1), Memphis Minnie (p.2), Robert Lockwood with Sonny Boy Williamson (p.25), Honey Boy Edwards (p.31), Elmore James, Little Walter & Muddy Waters (p.34), Bo Diddley (p.42), Billy Boy Arnold (p.44)

Peter Moody, the compiler, was frustrated that as he worked on the Chicago 5CD Fine Boogie set that was released in 2017, he was finding that he had many more prime recordings and ideas to bring to the ears of the blues music audience so he started work on this follow up collection.

Continuing the mix of well-known artists to the lesser-known, all the recordings are prime Chicago masterworks. With big hitters like Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson, all their tracks are alternate takes or originally unissued masters by the record companies, most of which are currently not available on release. Mixing with these three there are many more stars of this down home genre including Albert King, Jimmy Reed and Memphis Minnie, again with alternate recordings of their best well-known music. In this golden age of blues, there were so many superb recordings being made it was impossible to issue many of them into the singles record buying market place. Eventually when the new long playing albums began to surface they began to cater for this wealth of music when recording in later years.