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Buddy Guy - Can't Quit the Blues
Music CD CoverArtist: Buddy Guy Edition: Music CD Format: Box set, Original recording remastered CD Release Date: 2006-10-31 Music Label: Silvertone Records Soundtracks: Music CD 1- Way You Been Treating Me
- Sit and Cry (The Blues)
- This Is the End
- First Time I Met the Blues
- Ten Years Ago
- Let Me Love You Baby
- Stone Crazy
- When My Left Eye Jumps
- Hoodoo Man Blues
- In the Wee Hours
- I Can't Quit the Blues
- One Room Country Shack
- T-Bone Shuffle
- When You See the Tears from My Eyes [Live]
- I Smell a Rat
- She Suits Me to a T
- D. J. Play My Blues
Music CD 2- Damn Right, I've Got the Blues
- Mustang Sally
- Five Long Years
- Mary Ann
- She's Nineteen Years Old
- Miss Ida B
- Feels Like Rain
- 7-11
- I Smell Trouble
- Someone Else Is Steppin' In (Slippin' out, Slippin' In)
- My Time After Awhile [Live]
- Your Mind Is on Vacation
- Midnight Train - Buddy Guy, Jonny Lang
- Totally out of Control
Music CD 3- Nobody Understands Me But My Guitar
- Baby Please Don't Leave Me
- Done Got Old
- Honey Bee [#]
- Tramp
- Crawlin' Kingsnake
- Moanin' and Groanin'
- Bad Life Blues
- I Can't Be Satisfied [Live]
- First Time I Met the Blues [Live]
- I'd Rather Be Blind, Crippled and Crazy [#]
- Somebody's Sleeping in My Bed
- I Miss You
- Cut You Loose
- Price You Gotta Pay
Music CD 4- Ten Years Ago [DVD][Live]
- Hoodoo Man Blues [DVD][Live]
- Messin' with the Kid [DVD][Live]
- Come on in This House [DVD][Live]
- Sweet Little Angel [DVD][Live]
- Damn Right, I've Got the Blues [DVD][Live]
- Drowning on Dry Land [DVD][Live]
- Tramp [DVD][Live]
- Mustang Sally [DVD][Live]
- What'd I Say [DVD][Live]
- Louise McGhee [DVD][Live]
Free Music Notes for Can't Quit the BluesFree Music Review: Buddy Guy, Can't Quit The Blues - Maybe The Most Accessible Blues Box Set Ever Made Hit: 5 StarsCan't Quit the Blues is one of the best purchasing experiences I have ever had with a box set. This collection of tracks, performances, extras and supporting materials is both career spanning and eye-opening. And perhaps best of all, it's extremely affordable considering everything that you get. I would venture to say that after listening to all the audio disks several times, this set has changed my mind regarding many aspects of music. There are many box sets that are a treasure for die-hard fans, and you can also find some that are great introductions for beginners. But few box sets can truly be said to be great purchases for both. This is one of them. This is really the total package, and there is simply no way for me to be less enthusiastic about this set, try as I might to play devil's advocate and find something that could have been improved. While nothing is perfect and there are one or two small things I might have done differently, none of those things are significant when compared to the great content, very nice presentation, and tremendous value offered by this set.
For starters, it certainly helps that Buddy Guy's style of blues is very accessible musically to begin with. Many of Buddy's tracks could easily be played on classic rock stations and few people would blink. In fact, listening to these tracks sequentially a few times really made me appreciate just what a sonic influence Buddy's blues play has had on the world of rock music. There are more than a few instances where some of those chord riffs on recordings from the 50s and early 60s are reminiscent of techniques employed by Jimi Hendrix many years afterwards.
And of course, the box set goes to great lengths, through photos and the narrative of the liner book, to lay out his wide array of famous fans, from Eric Clapton to John Mayer. So there can be no doubt that even those who never even knew they heard a Buddy Guy track before can enjoy these tracks and cast a suspiscious eye towards the large number of classic rock bands that took so much from the Blues without paying the level of hommage that they should have. Granted, a large number of great bands have professed the influence of the Blues on their music, but with the passage of time fewer new artists seem to be aware of where those chords and rhythms came from.
But aside from the music itself is the wealth of information that is presented along with the music. What I am about to say is something that every product manager working in the music business should emulate on every box set that is produced. For every single track on each CD, the liner book includes the production notes including sound engineering and mixing in addtion to the normal writing and producer credits. We also have recording dates and locations for almost all of the performances, though understandably a few of them are not fully vetted out. Having all this information collected in one place is a convenience that even the seasoned blues fanatic will definitely appreciate. Reading the included book cover to cover will thus take a great deal of time. I am one of those who obsessively searches out that kind of information with almost every album purchase, and it is not uncommon for me to have to pour over materials to find out where and when particular live tracks were recorded. So the week it may take you to really read and appreciate each credit and each word of the narrative will indeed be time well spent. I particularly enjoyed this because it allowed me to see how Buddy worked with his many collaborators over his career. Many people are aware of the Willie Dixon connection, but there is so much more to learn when one listens to the tracks and can connect the dots between the tracks, the writers, the producers and the sounds between each recording.
Before I got this set a friend told me he thought they could have included 5 DVDs of additional live footage, but even with what they had it was worth the price of the set. The included extras, like the documentary, and the live festival footage is indeed also a very nice addition.
When you factor in the reasonable price of this set, it's really one of the best values in a box set that I have ever purchased. Definitely give this set a chance and take the time to really look at the liner book and notes on each track. If you weren't a Buddy Guy devotee before, you probably will be after you go through this set.
Enjoy!
Can't Quit the Blues PosterRobert Cray says that Buddy Guy's guitar solos sound like laughter from space, but they can also peal like the cries of lost souls attempting to cross the River Styx. If these 47 songs on three CDs plus a DVD boasting a new 75-minute documentary and six performances from the Montreux Jazz Festival prove anything, it's that Guy is one of the most dynamic, diverse, expressionistic, and emotional guitarists--in any genre. The set neatly examines the 70-year-old Chicago blues legend's half-century career, starting with a ragged but soulful "The Way You Been Treating Me" cut in 1957 at a radio station in Guy's native Louisiana that finds him developing his searing, exploratory style. A year later, he's in Chicago working with tunesmith Willie Dixon, and the rest is history (chronicled in Anthony DeCurtis's excellent lines notes) that leads from the glory days of Chess Records to Guy's early breakout recordings for Vanguard to his modern-day mastery. The most recent recordings often find him working with acolytes: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keb' Mo', Jonny Lang, Bonnie Raitt, Keith Richards, and John Mayer (who duets with Guy on the unreleased "I'd Rather Be Blind, Crippled & Crazy"). B.B. King, who along with Guitar Slim was Guy's most important early influence, also joins Clapton and Guy on a stirring acoustic version of John Lee Hooker's "Crawlin' Kingsnake."This set makes the argument for Guy's ever-continuing growth as a musician--not only as a player whose frenzy, improvisational instincts, and tonal control keep stretching with age, but as a stylist who was unafraid to put aside his trademark electric approach in 2003 to make the acoustic Blues Singer (represented here by "Bad Life Blues" and the Hooker tune) and to embrace primal North Mississippi juke joint music with Sweet Tea, which lends this set a pair of Junior Kimbrough covers. Guy's sole artistic weakness is his songwriting. He's never been prolific, and even in the '60s his lyrics drew on well-established clich?s. But, as these performances attest, his playing's never been less than daring--and his voice knows every nuance of heartache and joy. --Ted Drozdowski
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