It isn't exactly difficult to scoff at the Blues Brothers - beginning your musical career as a sketch on Saturday Night Live is not the best way to develop artistic credibility, and while Elwood Blues wasn't too shabby a harp player, his brother, Joliet Jake, sang only marginally better than that guy who used to impersonate Joe Cocker on late-night television. But no one ever bought a Blues Brothers album expecting a life-changing musical experience - these guys were there to put on a show, and putting on a great show is just what they did. It helped that Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi obviously loved the music, and they knew how to put together a killer band (any fan with the vision to hire Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Steve Jordan, and Matt "Guitar" Murphy" to cover classic blues and R&B deserves credit for good taste, if nothing else). The Complete Blues Brothers pulls together material from the band's debut live album, Briefcase Full of Blues, as well as cuts from the soundtrack to The Blues Brothers movie (including contributions from Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin). Play it loud and dance a lot - John would have wanted it that way. -Mark Deming, All Music Guide.

This guest-studded album relaunched Buddy Guy's career and set him toward the pinnacle of contemporary blues. Despite turns from Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler and others, it's Guy who burns brightest-and loudest. He delivers roaring, exuberant performances of classic R&B ("Mustang Sally"), old-time blues ("Black Night") and house rockers ("Where Is the Next One Coming From"). Most poignant, though, is his seven-minute instrumental "Rememberin' Stevie", which not only rekindles the fiery spirit of his own youth, but pays sensitive tribute to his late friend and admirer Stevie Ray Vaughan. This is the blueprint for Guy's current performing style. -Ted Drozdowski Thanks to a long instrumental tribute to his late friend Stevie Ray Vaughan, and to a crowd-pleasing version of Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally," this album renewed the Chicago's blues legend's commercial power. After laying out his new straightforward credo on the title track, Buddy Guy improvises furiously on "Black Night" and "Five Long Years. " Some fans say the album was one of the few times Guy truly captured his live fury on record, but this 1991 album didn't even try to do that. It was simply an attempt to expose himself to a contemporary blues audience, and it worked. -Steve Knopper.

Calm, cool, and collected, folksinger Eric Bibb approaches his craft in a style similar to that of Keb' Mo'. His honeyed voice and clean acoustic guitar wrap around songs like a flannel blanket. Bibb's music is filled with hope and uplifting sentiments without being spiritually pedantic. "Forgiveness Is Gold" and "So Glad" tell their stories in the titles alone. Even the lowly shoeshine man can approach his job and life with exuberance ("Dr. Shine") as he helps others improve their lives in his own small way. While these feelings could be juvenile, or-worse-corny, in the wrong hands, Bibb's songwriting and presentation elevate the material with a persuasive professionalism and integrity achieved through a career that spans ten years and as many albums. Credit also goes to producer Glen Scott, who brings just enough changes to the mix. Occasional tuba, snare drum, muted trumpet, and his keyboards add deeper, richer shades to these smooth watercolor sketches. The disc's lone live track, "My Father's House," injects subtle rawness into the proceedings and is certainly a highlight. [+]

Guitar hero Bonamassa may have dropped the "Smokin'" prefix from his performing name that he carried as a teenager, but he still specialises in superheated fret work. And for him, the faster it is, the better. Bonamassa sought to showcase the "heavier side of blues" on his fourth studio recording, emphasizing the approach used by the classic English blues-rockers. And he does just that with a hyperactive "Travellin' South" that Ten Years After would have been proud to claim and a hard-edged remake of the B. B. King hit "Never Make Your Move Too Soon". The title track, a Blind Faith favourite, is transformed into a frenetic live jam while Lowell Fulson's "Reconsider Baby", a staple of Bonamassa's live show, is given an extended workout and features some of his most potent blues licks. Sometimes Bonamassa is in too much of a hurry for his own good, but his penchant for speed works especially well on a couple of instrumentals. He races through "Revenge of the 10 Gallon Hat", a country-flavoured tribute to mentor Danny Gatton, and the rapid-fire, Al Di Meola-influenced closer "Faux Mantini. " -Michael Point.

Guest-star projects can be such tiresome affairs. Too often, the high-profile "friend" is nothing more than the record label's idea of someone they can feature on the front cover to generate additional sales. Additionally, these performances are frequently overdubbed, so the artist and the guest never actually come in contact with each other. Thankfully, neither is the case on Walter Trout's first studio album of new material since 2001's Go the Distance. Not only has the hotshot guitarist worked and maintained friendships with these players, but they convened in the same studio at the same time to nail these tunes. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of Trout's friends are guitarists who - like him - prefer to charge through songs with the intensity of a salmon swimming upstream. Joe Bonamassa, Bernard Allison, Guitar Shorty, Jeff Healey, Junior Watson, and Coco Montoya all share guitar-duel duties, and while the results aren't exactly subtle, there's enough explosive firepower here to level a small building. Even an acoustic session with Eric Sardinas - a neighbor of Trout's - attacks like an unplugged Rory Gallagher on a hot Belfast night. John Mayall (keyboards/vocals), James Harman (harp), Finis Tasby (vocals), Deacon Jones (Hammond B3 organ), and Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward also bring their game faces, and sometimes songs, contributing to various tracks with energy and intensity. Trout plays with his usual all-stops-out bluster, but there is an obvious affection for his guests on every track, which both energizes and spurs him on to new heights on what is arguably his best and most diverse effort yet. [+]

Tired of the showboating image that his early live performances had saddled him with-and that his black audience viewed as demeaning and degrading to his musical talent-Hendrix dissolved his Experience in 1969 in search of a more terra-firma-grounded, blues-oriented persona. On New Year's Eve, Hendrix, his old Army buddy bassist Billy Cox, and ex-Electric Flag drummer Buddy Miles performed a loose, jam-filled set at New York's Fillmore East (completists will want the panoramic though uneven Live at the Fillmore East). Released a few months after his New Year's Eve 1969 concert, Band of Gypsies underscored Hendrix's desired return to basics-even if his basic was at a level most guitarists could never attain in a lifetime of playing. -Billy Altman.

In a brief interview that precedes this CD's four bonus tracks-all unreleased gems from the original 1984 sessions-Stevie Ray Vaughan makes the point that "music used to be more based on common everyday occurrences like a train's sound going down the track. a horse walking. " Then he comes on with a version of Freddie King's "Hideaway" that chugs like a locomotive. There's also a heretofore unheard slide-guitar-powered "Give Me Back My Wig" and a blueprint of what became Soul to Soul's US radio hit "Look at Little Sister". All those follow the improved mixes of the original CD, which include Vaughan's heartbreak chronicles "Couldn't Stand the Weather" and "Cold Shot"; his first jazzer, "Stang's Swang"; and his initial Hendrix outing, "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)". It's the sound of the guitar hero growing as an artist on his own terms-sidestepping the irony that poisoned 1990s rock to stay true to the real-life aesthetic of the blues. -Ted Drozdowski.

If this is your first exposure to Eric Clapton, a bit of bewilderment would be in order. This is the legendary guitar icon. This is (as his early apostles once proclaimed) God. Ranging from the mid-80s through to the late 90s, The Clapton Chronicles owes less to the groundbreaking blues-rock of Clapton's 60s and 70s classics than to the polished-to-a-glare pop of Phil Collins, who produced one of the tracks included in this 14-song anthology. His reinterpretation of his greatest recording-the once-gripping, now-placid "Layla"-perhaps best illustrates Clapton at middle-age: Who wants to bask in his darkest period? Not Clapton, who converts his surging, purging charge into a soothing stroll. And perhaps not fans of such docile MOR fare as "My Father's Eyes", "Tears in Heaven" and the two new tracks, "Blue Eyes Blue" and "Get Lost". -Steven Stolder.

When this collection was first released, back in 1961, it soon became the bible of that decade's folk-blues revival, a set of songs which had scorched deep lines in the blues psyche, subsequently modified, electrified and boogie-fied. This reissue also includes a freshly exhumed alternative take of "Travelling Riverside Blues", as good an excuse as any to upgrade from old vinyl. The original album pulled together all of Johnson's classic songs, his ghost suddenly made corporeal for a generation that had only heard of the rare 78s via whispered rumour. "Cross Road Blues", "Terraplane Blues", "Hell Hound On My Trail": they're all tortured cries for help, Johnson most likely at the end of his teens when he recorded his only two sessions, first in 1936, then 37. He was a complete individual: these songs may well be fodder for countless cover versions, but few modern artists can hope to reproduce the originator's stylistic mannerisms. Johnson favoured uneven lines, unpredictable emphasis, strumming and plucking around an implied central melody. For the experienced listener, it's probably wise to invest in Complete Recordings, but as an introduction to Johnson's unique art, this disc has certainly stood the test of time. -Martin Longley.