• Track Listing

Blues expert Martin Hawkins tells the story of local blues singers and players that got onto records. The story goes beyond the Excello sound and the music of Lightnin' Slim, Slim Harpo, and also features folk music by Willie B. Thomas, Robert Pete Williams and others. A detailed introduction to the topic and artist biographies for each individual performer can be found in the extensive 52-page illustrated booklet. The recordings have been carefully remastered for this edition. Limited edition of 1,000 copies worldwide! These two CDs contain a more or less chronological taster of the blues from Baton Rouge, one of the several cities alongside the mighty Mississippi that has been thought of or thinks of itself as a blues town. Like New Orleans, Memphis, St. Louis and some smaller places, Baton Rouge's local blues players made a big contribution to the recorded legacy of the blues. We really don't know what the blue sound of Baton Rouge was before about 1954, when it's first bluesman was recorded, and by the 1970s the blues as current, recorded, black music was dying out, melding with R&B and the sounds of soul. Those newer sounds were still a part of black culture and, increasingly, of white culture locally and internationally, but a different muse, a different music, a different story. We concentrate on the period between 1954 and 1971, featuring here, together for the first time, those Baton Rouge singers and players who got onto records, one way or another. Some were aspiring professionals aiming for the stars, or at least for a local juke box spin, while others were local 'folk' performers plucked from their everyday life to sing for the man with the remote tape machine and a microphone.