Robert Johnson: King of the Delta Blues Singers (turquoise vinyl) [COLUMBIA/LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This Columbia/Legacy reissue comes on turquoise vinyl, pressed in the EU, with the original recording data for every track on the back cover. In 1980 it became the first album ever inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, and Mojo ranked it sixth among 100 Records That Changed the World.

This edition

• Turquoise vinyl
• Pressed in the EU
• Original recording dates and master numbers on the back cover

About the album

Robert Johnson recorded these songs in two sessions in 1936 and 1937, and in his lifetime they came out on 78s that sold mostly in the American South. "Terraplane Blues" was a regional hit. Then producer John Hammond, who had gone looking for Johnson in 1938 to put him on stage at Carnegie Hall, pushed Columbia to gather the best of them onto an LP, and in 1961 the folk revival met the Delta.

What it found was astonishing. "Cross Roads Blues" and "Hell Hound on My Trail" are as haunted as music gets, "Come On in My Kitchen" is a slow, shivering invitation, and "Traveling Riverside Blues," "Preachin' Blues" and "Walkin' Blues" ring with slide guitar so busy it sounds like two players. The Los Angeles Times wrote that these recordings revolutionized the Delta style that became the foundation of Chicago blues.

When the album reached England in the mid-1960s, the Wall Street Journal wrote, it energized a generation of musicians. The cover painting shows a faceless man in field clothes because nobody had found a photograph of Johnson yet; two turned up a decade later, by which time the record had very much done the introductions.

Also at Kops: more Robert Johnson on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia / Legacy (cat# 19439792621), a reissue of the 1961 compilation.