Texana Dames
Artist: Texana Dames

Of the many styles here, only the new wave track sounds forced. Mother/daughter harmonies. ~ Robert Gordon, All Music Guide Read More

Live On
Artist: Kenny Wayne Shepherd
Community Score: 4.75

Being a teenage blues guitar prodigy is a double-edged sword. Stunning technique brings attention, but also criticism that it's all style and no soul. This criticism plagued Kenny Wayne Shepherd since his popular debut album, Ledbetter Heights, and it's warranted to a certain extent. It didn't help that Shepherd so strongly recalled Stevie Ray... Read More

Dark of the Night
Artist: Scott Holt

Give Scott Holt credit for trying to breathe life into the modern electric blues with his second album, Dark of the Night. He is clearly indebted to tradition -- he spent over a decade as a sideman for Buddy Guy, and he performs not only with his band but with Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble and the Jimi Hendrix Experience as backing bands... Read More

The BBC Sessions
Artist: Rory Gallagher

The resurrected Buddha acquired the rights to much of Rory Gallagher's prime material in 1999. They began their reissue program with his first two albums, then they moved to what most hardcore fans would consider the crown jewel of the series, a double-disc collection of Gallagher's BBC sessions. Like most lead guitarists (at least those of his... Read More

The Blues
Artist: Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton earned a reputation as a blues guitarist early in his career, and while he frequently returned to the blues -- usually recording at least one blues tune per album -- he never recorded a full-fledged blues album until 1994's From the Cradle. It became one of the most popular records of his career. Not long afterward, MCA assembled a... Read More

Crazy Cajun Recordings
Artist: Sonny Landreth
The Ultimate Collection
Artist: Delbert McClinton

Hip-O's The Ultimate Collection comes very close to fulfilling the promise of its title. Over the course of 18 tracks, the compilation traces the evolution of Delbert McClinton's career, concentrating on his recordings for ABC, Capricorn, Capitol and Rising Tide, while hitting almost all of the major highlights. True, there may be a personal... Read More

Take Your Shoes Off
Artist: Robert Cray
Community Score: 8.00

It's evident right from the start that Robert Cray's aiming for a Memphis soul groove on Take Your Shoes Off. Willie Mitchell of Hi Records fame co-wrote and did the horn arrangements for the lead-off cut, "Love Gone to Waste," and Jim Pugh's burbling organ would have fit snugly into the mix of an early '70s Al Green record. The blues is not... Read More

The Real Deal: Greatest Hits, Vol. 2
Artist: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
Community Score: 7.00

Stevie Ray Vaughan was one of a kind. Even his peers knew so. So many times, people like Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy have spoken publicly about Stevie Ray's gift, and it was a gift. His guitar leads would jet off into the stratosphere, return, reload, and blast off again, time after time. The Real Deal is exactly what it says it is. This is a... Read More

Green and Guitar: The Best of Peter Green 1977-1981
Artist: Peter Green

This is a reasonably comprehensive collection of Peter Green's catalog, with 78 minutes of music at mid-price, drawn from In the Skies, Little Dreamer, Blue Guitar, White Sky and Legend, the first two albums contributing the majority of the best material here. Green's guitar playing is as impressive as ever, and his singing is nothing to ignore,... Read More

Blackwater Surprise
Artist: Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise

Robert Bradley was a Detroit street singer for years before he was convinced to enter the studio by a group of young alternative rockers. The resulting album, Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise, is indeed surprising -- an effective collaboration between a blind blues musician and a sympathetic Detroit rock trio. The band wisely decided to stay... Read More

John Mayall's Blues Breakers Crusade
Artist: John Mayall
Bluesbreakers/A Hard Road
Artist: John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers
Pious Bird of Good Omen
Artist: Fleetwood Mac

With songs taken from Fleetwood Mac and Mr. Wonderful, Pious Bird of Good Omen serves as a worthy 12-track compilation of the band's early Peter Green days. Climbing to number 18 in the U.K., the album managed to catapult Fleetwood Mac's version of Little Willie John's "Need Your Love So Bad" into the English charts for the third time, resting... Read More

Clapton Chronicles: The Best of Eric Clapton
Artist: Eric Clapton
Community Score: 8.62

Clapton Chronicles ignores Eric Clapton's 1983 Reprise debut, Money and Cigarettes (which sounded more like an RSO album, anyway), starting with the pair of Phil Collins-produced mid-'80s albums, Behind the Sun and August. Though these had a pop sheen, they were album rock holdovers. Clapton didn't get the balance between hard rock and... Read More