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Sunday, March 11, 2012

Blind Willie Johnson - The Complete Blind Willie Johnson (USA 1993)

An Uncle Roddus Album review



The Blues. The original acoustic blues. Blind Willie Johnson, perhaps one of the greatest proponents of early blues guitar. His music is deeply spiritual and at the same time quite haunting and his playing is just sublime. His very gruff vocals take some getting use to but the melodies he sang have survived well the test of time. Careful attention paid to his guitar picking presents many rewards and is just beautiful. After listening to the Son House track in the previous post I got to thinking about Blind Willie. So many of these ancient gospel blues are so well known, especially from the likes of Led Zeppelin, who, through their "interpretations" of several of the songs on this collection, made them household names. This set collects all 30 known recordings from this sublime singer and guitarist, recorded from 1927-1930 by Columbia records, who appropriately released this double CD on their excellent Roots & Blues series. For old recording like these the sound quality is very good, which helps for enjoying his playing. Rating 5/5

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