Folk Festival of the Blues (Recorded Live)

This edition presents a whos who of the Chicago blues from the 1960s. Featured here are such talents as Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Howlin Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Willie Dixon, performing at the peak of their careers. This WPOA live radio broadcast was emceed in the early 1960s by local disc jockey Big Bill Hill at Chicagos intimate Copacabana Club. (When the album was reissued in 1967, it was retitled Blues from Big Bills Copacabana.) The legendary radio performance was originally issued on Chess subsidiary label Argo during the height of the folk music blues revival, and it has remained long unavailable on vinyl. Each artist was showcased with Buddy Guys band providing the accompaniment, plus Muddys right hand man, pianist Otis Spann. This is not the folk festival that one might expect, especially taking into consideration that the blues here are electric. This is a gritty live record of the most authentic electric Chicago blues of the 60s. The combination of performances by Guy, Howlin Wolf, Willie Dixon, and Sonny Boy in tandem with Waters would certainly checklist this one into the various artists category, but with half of the tracks here being fronted by Waters, its clearly Muddys show. His performances of Got My Mojo Working, (Shes) 19 Years Old, Clouds in My Heart, Sitting and Thinking, and the vocal trio effort with Guy and Dixon on the show opening Wee, Wee Baby are nothing less than exemplary.