Re: Little Walter Boxed Set!

[<gmayhew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
> This weekend I was looking through some CD's that a guy had
> for sale at the Santa Cruz Blues Festival when I came across
> a Little Walter boxed set.  Well, I promply gave him all of
> my money and snatched it up.  He told me that he had to have
> them brought in from England.  The set contains 4 CD's with
> 95 tracks which "represents all the available Little Walter
> recordings on Chess from 1952-1963".  It comes with a 40 page
> booklet about his life.   On the box it says that these are
> the original Checker recordings licensed from Charly Records
> courtesy of Red Dog Express Inc.  Has anyone else heard about
> other compilations such as this?  What other good stuff like
> this is available out there?  I noticed that the guy also had a
> nine CD set of Muddy Waters stuff as well.  It's a shame that
> such treasures are not more readily available.
>
> Leland Ho
>

I think it's a shame, too.  I've purchased Charly reissues
of Chess releases by Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy
Reed, Jimmy Rogers, Frank Frost, and others that I have
never seen under the Chess/MCA label.  Apparently, Charly has
access to a lot of masters and they are making them available
to the public.  The quality of the CDs is first rate, and the
liner notes are very informative.  So far. I've paid only
$7.99 each for these discs (at Camelot).  Can't beat the deal.

Here's the bad news.  MCA owns the Chess catalog.  MCA is in
the process of suing every company that reissues Chess
recordings without a license from MCA, including Charly.
Now, I wouldn't mind MCA taking legal action to stop these
companies from impinging on MCA's rights of ownership, assuming
they really own the stuff outright, if MCA was doing a bang-up
job of reissuing the material themselves.  But they are not.
The blues reissue market is not big enough to get MCA's full
attention.

So buy those Charly and Red Dog discs while you can.  And while
you're at it, check out the Rhino series.  I think it's called
"Masters of the Blues, Volumes 1- ?"  Great collections grouped
according to style, era, and geography.  Also, Evidence is
reissuing a catalog of French recordings of American blues
artists.

George