Various Artists – Barrelhouse Blues 1927-1936 – Yazoo 1028 

Submitting the inspired energies of numerous of both the blues’ utmost talented known and obscure pianists, this substantially worthy 14-track compilation emphasizes songs produced during the 1927–1936-time frame.  As the movement of manual workhands tracked available employment on the turpentine camps in the southern U.S., the expression “barrelhousing” came to denote a hard drinking, hard living existence such as that found in the joints in and nearby these sites.  As such, roaming blues piano players shadowed the migration, performing in the camps’ nearby juke joints, eager to cash in on the freely flowing dollars being spent by the manual laborers of the many encampments. 

This CD provides many interesting blues piano styles, and as previously mentioned, give tastes of the varying musical frameworks delivered by more well-known and lesser-known blues piano artists.  This compilation ultimately serves up a first-rate overview of the sophistication, but equally, the force and variety of blues piano designs commencing to unfurl, not only as played by the blues vagabonds playing the barrelhouse joints in the U.S. south, but in all of the piano blues of this period everywhere.

Essential brilliant endeavors by a highly-diverse assemblage of early blues piano artists! 

Below are the superlative tracks of this CD in running order.

Song Titles

Cow Cow Davenport

• State Street Jive

Little Brother Montgomery

• Vicksburg Blues No. 2

Montana Taylor

• Indiana Avenue Stomp

Bob Call

• Thirty-One Blues

Lonnie Johnson

• Sam, You’re Just A Rat

George Noble

• Seminole Blues

Joe Dean

• I’m So Glad That I’m Twenty-One Years Old Today

Charley Taylor

• Heavy Suitcase Blues

Barrelhouse Welsh

• Dying Pickpocket Blues

Louise Johnson

• On The Wall

Jabo Williams

• Polack Blues

Jesse James

• Ramrod

Raymond Barrow

• Walking Blues

Will Ezell

• Barrelhouse Woman (Take 2)