VA - When The Sun Goes Down - Walk Right In

"Walk Right In" was the first compilation that Bluebird/RCA assembled for its blues-oriented "When the Sun Goes Down" series, which examines the role that RCA Victor played in documenting American roots music. To a large degree, this 79-minute CD focuses on acoustic blues of the '20s, '30s, and early '40s. "Walk Right In" spans 1926-1941, and the most recent recording is Robert Petway's moody "Catfish Blues" (which had a major impact on John Lee Hooker and Lightnin' Hopkins).

The disc offers a variety of blues styles, and they range from pre-World War II, pre-Muddy Waters Chicago blues (Big Bill Broonzy's "Mississippi River Blues") to Southern country blues (Big Joe Williams' "Baby, Please Don't Go," Bukka White's "The Panama United") to jazz-influenced classic blues (including Albert Hunter's 1927 recording of W.C. Handy's "Beale Street Blues," which boasts Fats Waller on pipe organ). But "Walk Right In" isn't strictly a blues disc; this compilation also gets into everything from old-time country (the Carter Family's "Worried Man Blues") to a Cajun/Creole blend (Amédé Ardoin and Dennis McGee's "Les Blues de Voyage").

 

Anyone who expects every song on the CD to have 12 bars will be disappointed; the thing that ties all of the material together isn't a 12-bar format, but rather the feeling of the blues. In the 21st century, blues feeling enriches everything from hip-hop and dance music to alternative rock, and Walk Right In" demonstrates there was a similar situation before World War II. Not everything on "Walk Right In" is a 12-bar blues, but everything on this compilation has the feeling of the blues. This compilation is enthusiastically recommended to anyone who is seriously interested in American roots music.     - allmusic.com

The first volume of this superb four-disc series, subtitled The Secret History of Rock & Roll, expands on the conventional formula that blues plus country equals rock & roll. Drawing from the RCA Victor-Bluebird vaults, it offers 25 recordings (many of them seminal, all of them choice) that predate the urban blues explosion and inform the rock music that followed. The disc-opening "Catfish Blues" by Robert Petway became "Rolling Stone" once Muddy Waters electrified it, while "Baby, Please Don't Go"--initially recorded by Big Joe Williams with only washboard and one-string fiddle for support--is a blues-rock staple. Other highlights extend from Leadbelly's chain-gang chant "Ham an' Eggs" and folk standard "The Midnight Special" to the formative country of the Carter Family's "Worried Man Blues." Also noteworthy are an exquisite "Beale Street Blues," with Alberta Hunter backed only by Fats Waller on organ, and the operatic majesty of Paul Robeson's "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child." The sound quality is as superior as the selection, with digital technology eliminating the hisses and crackles so common in archival reissues, without any loss of fidelity. --Don McLeese

VA - When The Sun Goes Down - Walk Right In
(256 kbps, cover art included)