What are the best live blues albums?
I’m not sure whether I’m complicating or simplifying this choice but I’ve created two categories for live albums based on the blues:
- This one, for what I think of as pure blues. The blues artists are people like BB King, Albert King, Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy.
- I’ve created a separate readers poll to find out the best live blues rock albums. The blues rock artists are artists and groups like Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton & Cream, The Allman Brothers Band and Rory Gallagher.
If you love the blues and blues inspired rock, I’d very much like it if you could vote in both best live album polls.
I believe these live recordings capture the intensity of the blues better than the sterile studio recordings. I think the artists tend to be inspired by the enthusiastic response of the audience.
My Favourite Live Blues Albums
Since I ask for the live albums you think represent the best of the blues, I think it’s only fair that I share my personal favourites.
The way I approach my selection is to assume I’m stranded on a desert island but I’m allowed to select five live albums from each genre. This means that some crossover albums can get selected in the easier of the genres.
I was introduced to the blues through the English blues rock bands of the 1960s – Eric Clapton and Cream, Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac and The Rolling Stones. I wanted to understand what influenced them.
An obvious starting point is BB King. For the popular mainstream, he is Mr Blues and probably by far the best known of the great bluesmen.
Live At The Regal is terrific but it’s a bit short. I love it when I play it but I don’t play it very often. Live In Japan is longer is a fine album. Live In Cook County Jail has plenty to recommend it too but I’m not sure a BB King album is going to make the list.
I can’t believe I’ve written that last sentence so don’t be surprised if I come back and change my mind.
Then there are his “brothers”, Albert and Freddie to consider. Yes I know that they are not really his brothers but it’s always struck me as odd that three of the best known (and best) blues guitarists are called King.
Albert King was HOT when he got to the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco in June 1968. These concerts give us Live Wire / Blues Power together with Wednesday Night and Thursday Night In San Francisco. I wish the record company would bundle all three together. Albert has released several other fine live albums. Again I’m not sure that any will make my desert island selection of five.
Someone who will definitely feature is Luther Allison. He is my favourite blues singer and guitarist and it’s a shame he wasn’t better known during his life. Gradually more people are discovering his music.
There are two of his albums I instinctively turn to when I feel like the blues and I haven’t been pointed at another artist – Where Have You Been? Live In Montreux 1976 – 1994 and Live In Chicago from 1995.
I can’t live without either of them so they are the first two to make my desert island selection.
Chicago blues dominate my blues album collection so it’s appropriate to think about the man who links the traditional Mississippi sound to the development of urban blues, Muddy Waters.
An obvious album is Muddy Waters At Newport from 1960. Even though it has been extended in 2001, it’s still too short. This matters to me on my desert island because I can’t afford to get tired of any of the albums, especially as my listening goes in phases. When I listen to the blues, I only want to listen to the blues.
In the late 1970s, Waters found popularity again with the studio album Hard Again and the album I’m selecting is the expanded version of Muddy “Mississippi” Waters Live.
Three down, two to find.
I’m having quite a lot of trouble narrowing them down and I have most of the albums included in the best live blues album poll in my collection along with a few others.
I think one is going to be “guitar intensive” whilst the other is probably going to be one of the more subtle “old fashioned” blues albums. People in contention include Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf and Son Seals.
To be continued.