B.B. King, Muddy Waters, et al.
The Blues... A Real Summit Meeting

This is an excellent sounding Buddah Brown & Pink Label Double LP. Listen to 'Big Mama' Thorton’s voice on this record -- it sounds like somebody forgot to put a limiter on her mic. It is without a doubt one of the most dynamic vocals we have ever heard on any record. You feel like you are sitting front row center.

These records sound JUST RIGHT to us; it doesn't sound like there's anything you could do to it to make them sound better. It's tonally correct from top to bottom and very transparent. If you want a great introduction to the blues, we can't think of a better one than this.

What The Best Sides Of The Blues... A Real Summit Meeting Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1973
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing these records are the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions are the only way to find pressings that sound as good as these two do.

We raved about the Mobile Fidelity pressing years ago as being one of the best blues albums, musically and sonically, around. There's virtually no chance that the MOFI sounds as good as this one. We would wager quite a large sum of money on that claim!

What We're Listening For On The Blues... A Real Summit Meeting

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One

• "Big Mama" Thornton - Little Red Rooster
• "Big Mama" Thornton - Ball And Chain
• Jay McShann - Smooth Sailing
• Jay McShann - Cronfessin' The Blues

Side Two

• Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson - They Call Me Mr. Cleanhead
• Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson - Hold It Right There
• Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson - Back Door Blues
• Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson - Kidney Stew
• Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup - That's Alright Now Mama

Side Three

• Lloyd Glenn - Honky Tonk Train
• Lloyd Glenn - After Hours
• Lloyd Glenn - Pine Tops Boogie Woogie
• Muddy Waters - Long Distance Call
• Muddy Waters - Where's My Woman Been
• Muddy Waters - Get My Mojo Workin'

Side Four

• Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - The Drifter
• Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - Please Mr. Nixon
• B.B. King - Outside Help

AMG Review

Besides the legendary B.B. King and Muddy Waters, a live Newport audience in New York hears some lesser lights such as Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson. Of historical interest, Big Mama Thornton, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, and Jay McShann offer renditions of their own songs that were covered for a much larger audience by Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, and others. An unexpected delight is the electrified violin played by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, who backs other performers here as well as taking the lead on two tunes.