Consumer Guide Album

Guitar Player Presents Legends of Guitar -- Electric Blues, Vol. 1 [Rhino, 1990]
What do guitar mavens know of rock and roll? Interesting to excellent though most of the individual selections in this series are, they don't track--obvious classics meet understandable obscurities for your historical elucidation and not much else. This volume is different. I like blues and have a large record collection, yet I don't own more than six or seven of the 17 tunes here, and most of those I don't play. Now I will. The guitarists are terrific, naturally. But so are the singers and the songs. And blues variety isn't various enough to get distracting--from Albert King's "Personal Manager" (I've never liked Albert), to Elmore James's "Dust My Blues" (I've wanted this version for years) to Guitar Slim's "The Story of My Life" (too specialized for me, I thought) is seamless pleasure. And that's just a random sample. A