Putumayo BLUES

Putumayo Presents Mississippi Blues, a musical journey down the Mississippi, from Memphis to New Orleans. The blues was born on the fertile soil that lines the banks of the mighty Mississippi River. Mississippi Blues includes artists who were born and raised near the river, many of whom left when they were adults to establish careers and new styles in Chicago, St. Louis, New York and other cities. Whether they stayed in the region or moved away, all of the artists on Mississippi Blues maintained a close connection to their rural blues traditions.
Mississippi Blues features artists with roots in the lower Mississippi region between Memphis and New Orleans. Innovators like Luther Allison and Ike and Tina Turner took the musical legacy of Robert Johnson and incorporated new regional and musical influences, making individual statements of their own. Geographically, the route extends from the electric sounds made in Chicago by Delta natives, to the sophisticated Memphis stylings of Tennessee's Bobby "Blue" Bland, to the river's final destination in Louisiana, where guitarist Chris Thomas King plays his own brand of blues.
The pool of artists nurtured by the Mississippi River is as wide and vast as the river itself. The cross-section of performers on Mississippi Blues is a distillation of the region's talent, and will lead the listener on a memorable musical voyage that will inspire a fresh look at the beauty and vitality of Mississippi blues. Mississippi Blues features detailed liner notes by respected New Orleans music critic Scott Jordan and images by noted photographer Jack Vartoogian.

Titles include:
Luther Allison Part Time Love
Junior Wells Come On In The House
Missisissippi Minnie I Got To Make A Change Blues
Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup Mean 'OL Frisco
Artie White The More You Lie To Me
John Lee Hooker Baby Don't Do Me Wrong
Chris Thomas King Come On In My Kitchen
Ike And Tina Turner 3 O'Clock In The Morning Blues
Bobby Bland St. James Infirmary
Mississippi John Hurt Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor

PUTU196 CD $14.98 more info

Congress has designated 2003 as the Year of the Blues and both PBS and National Public Radio are producing series’ that will bring a much greater profile to the blues this fall. With American Blues, which will be released on August 26, 2003, Putumayo continues its successful series of blues and blues- influenced albums that began in 1999 with Mali to Memphis: An African-American Odyssey. American Blues is a collection of some of our favorite blues tracks by legends and rising stars that are helping to keep the blues alive and thriving.
The artists on this compilation have remained true to the roots of the blues, be those the acoustic guitar sounds of the Mississippi Delta, the urban electric drive of Chicago, or the swamp boogie of Louisiana. While they may have developed their own unique voices and approaches, they have made it their mission to respect the fundamental sound, structure and soul of the blues.


Titles include:
Arthur Adams & B. B. King Get Next To Me
Keb Mo' Hand It Over
Ruth Brown Good Day For the Blues
Henry Gray How Could You Do It?
Taj Mahal Cakewalk Into Town
Robert Cray & Albert Collins She's Into Something
Sugar Pie Desanto Hello, San Francisco (Part 1)
Raful Neal Call Me Baby
Otis Rush I Got the Blues
Sunpie Sunpie's Romp and Stomp
Eric Bibb Needed Time
Chris Thomas King Why Blues?
Susan Tedeschi Just Won't Burn
Solomon Burke None Of Us Are Free

PUTU215 CD $14.98 more info

Mali to Memphis is a journey from the heart of an ancient West African kingdom to a city where American black music came into its own, from the sandy banks of the Niger River to the levees of the Mississippi. These songs do not unlock the secrets of Delta blues or Malian spirit music. But there is a kinship between these musicians, and their art reveals that fact in loud, living, present-tense terms, even as it invites us to contemplate the unsolvable riddles of the past.
Mali is an enormous, landlocked country that fills the interior of West Africa. It stretches from the Sahara desert in the north, to the edge of the coastal rain forests in the south. The country's biggest waterway, the Niger River, winds its way northward from Guinea, through the Malian capital, Bamako. It continues up to Segu, center of the old Bambara Empire and ancestral home to many artists on this compilation, and then on to Timbuktu at the edge of the Sahara.

Titles include:
Amadou/Mariam Mon Amour, Ma Cherie
John Lee Hooker I 'm In The Mood
Habib Koite Sirata
Rokia Traore Sabali
Guy Davie You Don't Know My Mind
Boubacar Traore Kar Kar Madison
Eric Bibb Don't Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down
Lobi Traore Dounouya
Muddy Waters My Home Is In The Delta
Jessie Mae Hemphill Standing in My Doorway Crying
Baba Djan Sabari
Taj Mahal Queen Bee

PUTU145 CD $14.98 more info