Little Walter: The Best Of (Chess 75 series) [HIP-O RECORDS]

Why you'll love it

This Chess 75 series edition is remastered, pressed on 180g vinyl in mono and housed in a gatefold jacket. Ten of its twelve songs were Top 10 Billboard R&B hits, with "Juke" and "My Babe" both going to No. 1.

This edition

• Chess 75 series
• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Mono
• Gatefold jacket

About the album

Little Walter didn't so much play the harmonica as plug it in and turn it into a whole horn section. This was the first LP Checker ever put out, collecting his biggest singles from 1952 to 1955, and it still works as the cleanest introduction to the man who changed what the instrument could do. Every track is short, sharp and built around that amplified harp.

"Juke" is the instrumental that made his name, cut with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers on guitar. "My Babe," with Leonard Caston and Robert Lockwood Jr., swings like mad, while "Sad Hours," "Off the Wall" and "Blue Lights" show off his tone. Willie Dixon plays bass and produces, Fred Below keeps the time, Dave and Louis Myers add guitar elsewhere, and Studs Terkel wrote the sleeve notes around Don Bronstein's famous cover portrait.

The Blues Foundation inducted it into its Hall of Fame in 1991, and Rolling Stone put it on its 500 Greatest Albums list in 2003. Harmonica players have been trying to sound like this ever since, and we hear most of them practising in the shop.

Also at Kops: more Little Walter on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Chess (cat# LP 1428).