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REVIEWS

The Guitar Wizard: The Tampa Red Collection

1929 - 1953—Acrobat ACFCD7517

WOW!!! A Tampa Red five cd set… five, that’s 5 cds of

‘The Guitar Wizard’, a total of 121 tracks from 1929 -

1953. Selected recordings from his Vocalion, Bluebird
and RCA-Victor output.

If you have the 2015 double from Ace Records

(CDTOP2 1440), you need this five disc set to give you
a wonderful overview of Tampa’s career. Although

there are obviously tracks missing with such a vast catalogue to select from… maybe,

hopefully, those missing tracks will eventually see the light of day on cd.

I recall some people saying that his slide playing was great but they wished he’d not

used a kazoo. Strange, it appears it was O.K. for Jesse Fuller!! And anyway, jug bands

also incorporated a washboard and sometimes jangling spoons along with guitar,
jug and kazoo.

Remember, these recordings were made when instruments were a lot quieter, there’s

no heavy metal guitar here, thankfully. What you get is ‘really the blues’ with some
‘hokum’ thrown in for good measure.

Now, regardless of what you may have been led to believe, Elmore James is not the

original artist who wrote and recorded ‘Stranger Blues’ or “‘It Hurts Me Too’ ....
Hudson Whittaker (Tampa’s name) was the composer!!! “Poor Stranger Blues”

(1947), ‘It Hurts Me Too’ (1940). Nor was B.B. King the originator of ‘Sweet Little

Angel’, no, it was our man Tampa Red.

In the past I’ve managed to find double or triple cds of gospel groups and artists on

Acrobat and they’ve been fantastic value. Now I find, along with this Tampa Red set,

there’s an amazing amount of blues, mostly doubles, by people like Curley
Weaver,Papa Charlie Jackson, Lightnin’ Slim, Texas Alexander, plus all the usual

subjects, Elmore, B.B., T-Bone, Wolf, Patton etc.

So if you’re a cd person rather than Alexa, grab these while they’re still available.
The Tampa Red Collection is very highly recommended by the way, but thought you

may have guessed that.

Bob Pearce