Reddit mentions: The best regional blues music

Benny Carter. The National Endowment for the Arts honored Benny Carter with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award for 1986. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, winner of the Grammy Award in 1994 for his solo "Prelude to a Kiss", and also the same year, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2000 awarded the National Endowment for the Arts, National Medal of Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton.

>http://www.amazon.com/Benny-Carter-Songbook-Tribute/dp/B000000FQH/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1280288455&sr=1-4

Benny Carter's Songbook features 13 different singers on 15 compositions.

• Agreed, Robert Johnson is a good start. Some describe his style as a blend of other musicians at his time, or at times blatant homages (or ripoffs?). For example, Johnson's Sweet Home Chicago was 'inspired' by Kokomo Arnold's Kokomo Blues.
  
  
• Skip James is another good one. If you ever watched 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou,' the song hard time killing floor blues played by the guitarist in the movie at the camp fire is a Skip James tune. One distinguishing feature of Skip is that a lot of his songs are minor key blues played (in fact, he started learning guitar in open D-minor tuning). Another classic of his is Devil Got My Woman. Artists like Cream have covered his songs, like I'm so glad, and was an influence to Robert Johnson (for example, compare 22-20 blues and 32-20 blues.
  
  
• Son House is another blues musician who influenced Johnson and people after him. An example of a modern cover of one of his songs is the White Stripes cover of Son's Death Letter Blues.
  
  Other standards that should be explored more are
  
  
• Blind Lemon Jefferson,
  
• Blind Willie McTell,
  
• Blind Willie Johnson,
  
• and the not-so-blind Kokomo Arnold, others as well.
  
  
  One good start for Folk Music in general is The American Folkways Collection, which has a few highlights from some a few other blues musicians.
  
  Wikipedia is good for discovering blues music, by reading the articles on these guys and looking at who they played with or were influenced by. Also good to read articles about rock musicians like Led Zeppelin, Yardbirds, Cream, Clapton, and look at the background or inspiration to their music since a lot of their songs are covers of some old blues tunes (e.g. compare Led Zeppelin's version of 'Nobody's Fault of Mine' to Blind Willie Johnson's version.
  
  

As fun and interesting as the dancing is, the music behind the dance is just as great:

Jump Blues links:

http://www.stuve.com/history.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_blues

This is where rock and roll came from; if you like rock and roll, you'll probably love this stuff. For folks looking for some good Jump samplers, the best I've ever come across are the two CDs from the Blues Masters collections, volumes 5 and 14:

http://www.amazon.com/Blues-Masters-Vol-Jump-Classics/dp/B0000032X7

http://www.amazon.com/Blues-Masters-Vol-14-More/dp/B0000032XN/ref=pd_sim_m_1

A lot of the songs were originally written and recording in the 1920's-30's. This is certainly an amazing movie, and the soundtrack is incredible to boot, but I would highly recommend checking out some of Alan Lomax's field recordings. Truly amazing. "Popular Songbook" is by far my favorite compilation and features the original version of "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby."

Not sure if you'd consider it great, but I love the Derek Trucks Band's Live at Georgia Theater album. So much good stuff and all of the songs are the Live Bootleg Version. Here's an Apple Music link, Spotify Link, and Amazon link. So good.

| | |
|-:|:-|
|name|Mississippi Sheiks|
|about artist|The Mississippi Sheiks were a popular and influential American guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s. They were notable mostly for playing country blues, but were adept at many styles of popular music of the time. The Mississippi Sheiks consisted mainly of the Chatmon family, who came from Bolton, Mississippi and were well known throughout the Mississippi Delta. The father of the family had been a "musicianer" (someone with good technical ability on his or her instrument adept at sight-reading written music) during slavery times, and his children carried on the musical spirit. ([more on last.fm](http://www.last.fm/music/Mississippi Sheiks))|
|album|Honey Babe Let the Deal Go Down: The Best of the Mississippi Sheiks, released May 2004|
|track|The Jazz Fiddler|
|images|album image, artist image|
|links|track on amazon, album on amazon|
|tags|blues, countryblues, folk, americana|
|similar|Bo Carter, Frank Stokes, Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell, Tampa Red|
|metrics|lastfm listeners: 37,022, lastfm plays: 180,683, youtube plays: 30, radd.it score: 2.33|


Please downvote this comment if this data is incorrect!
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In my opinion, the tracks he recorded in 1930 are what makes him special. There's a night-and-day difference between the urgency and grit of those few songs and his "rediscovery" stuff. They're all available on Spotify. If you want a hard copy or want to ensure that you get the best sound quality, this Yazoo release of Skip James tracks weirdly enough has four of those Son House tracks tacked on and Yazoo is known for doing a good job of transferring from old 78s. Also, Skip James is life-changingly good. Listen to Cypress Blues or Hard Time Killing Floor.

Yazoo has another cool compilation that includes the very recently discovered Clarksdale Moan. It's pretty lucky that that one random record survived for 80 years!

I love that Stack O'lee track. I had no idea Bussard had a copy but I can't say I'm surprised. I got The Stuff Dreams are Made of a few years ago and that song really stood out for me. It's a great compilation of the worlds rarest 78's.

check out this version by [Tommy Jarrell] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e56j2jDGHw)

Defining folk music is tough, because the term has become a catchall for many different types of music. Folk music was very much an oral tradition for a long, long time. Songs would melt into one another and many common themes could be found in many different songs. Look at the story of Stack-O-Lee and Billy Lyons or Betty and Dupree. These stories have been told in different songs dozens of times.

I would point you to the [Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music] (https://www.amazon.com/Anthology-American-Music-Edited-Harry/dp/B000001DJU) as a great starting point for the "genre." It does a great job of showing the many different styles of music that have since come under the folk umbrella. It also basically lays out the blueprint for so much of the popular music that followed in the decades since it's release.

I have this great collection which is called An Anthology of Big Band Swing 1930-1955 and I really like it. It's sort of obscure though. Here's a link:

http://www.amazon.com/Anthology-Big-Band-Swing-1930-1955/dp/B000003N3T

There are some great recordings on there.

Blue.

• The blues: Bessie Smith, Son House, basically everything off the Anthology of American Folk Music, Doug Macleod, and swing/jazz stuff (the Duke).
  
  
• Alternative (?): The Pixies, Butthole Surfers, Violent Femmes, The Mars Volta, At the Drive-In, Blood Brothers
  
  
• Older Stuff: B-52s, Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Cure (Pornography), Joy Division, The Go-Gos, Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, Boingo, The Smiths
  
  
• Indie/Folk: Conor Oberst / Bright Eyes, Bon Iver, Cat Power, M. Ward,
  
  
• Rap: Anything by RZA (Gravediggaz' 6 Feet Deep album), Dr. Octagon, Beastie Boys
  
  
• Misc: Bad Religion, Bach, Warpaint, Cake, Dresden Dolls, James Blake, Joanna Newsom, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
  
  
  So yeah. A little all over with a dark side I guess.
  
  (edit: formatting, and I can't believe I forgot the Smiths)

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Great post. There’s an album called, “Roots of the Dead” I discovered while working at a music store way back in the day. Not sure if OP is referencing the same. Here’s the link. Highly recommend.

You may enjoy The Music Never Stopped: The Roots of the Grateful Dead.

I would just look for compilations like:

Great American Big Bands

Big Band Era Vol. 2

Anthology Of Big Band Swing 1930-1955

A Big Band Christmas

Folk songs for me begin and end with the Anthology of American Folk Music, collated in the '50s by Harry Smith. This is Greil Marcus's "old weird America" in spades: the last song on Disc One (the must-have record of the set) is Kelly Harrell's "My Name is John Johanna," likely the scariest music I've ever heard.

Essential album for me
The music never stopped: roots of the grateful dead

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000000DT2?pc_redir=1397153573&robot_redir=1