AMG Review of Complete Chess Recordings (Chess 50th Anniversary)

Cub Koda
All Music Guide

While the 1976 issue of Chicago Bound, the first collection of Jimmy Rogers' Chess material has been rightly hailed as a definitive cornerstone in absorbing the history of early Chicago blues; sadly, that vinyl album has been out of print for a number of years with virtually nothing in the catalog to take its place. Until now. This two-CD (in a single-disc package) anthology collects up everything that appeared on Chicago Bound, a number of notable cuts from a two-vinyl-disc anthology that was barely released in the late 1970s, and no less than ten unreleased alternate takes from a variety of sessions with one of them, "Luedella," emanating from his first solo session in 1950. The singing, playing, and songwriting is virtually a textbook for the early Chicago style, as the players involved include Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, and Big Walter Horton, with all but Horton and Dixon regular mainstays of Muddy's original band, the blueprint of the early electric band sound. While some novices will find a two-disc set perhaps more than they want to pop for, this is as good as '50s Chicago blues gets, and no collection should really be without this one.