One of the many "best of Jimmy Reed" albums released over the years, Guitar, Harmonica & Feeling is a 27-song CD that the European independent Saar put out in 1990. Liner notes are thin, but recording dates and personnel are all included. The sound quality is good, and the material itself is nothing to complain about. Laidback hits like "Baby, What You Want Me to Do," "Big Boss Man," "Honest I Do" and "Take Out Some Insurance" are included along with some enjoyable rarities, including the playful "Sugar, Sugar". There's also the infectious "Ain't That Loving You Baby" and of course, "Bright Lights, Big City". These 27 songs certainly are a good introduction to Reed's legacy, and a bluesman of his magnitude is well-served by this compilation.
Allmusic.com:
There's simply no sound in the blues as easily digestible, accessible, instantly recognizable, and as easy to play and sing as the music of Jimmy Reed. His best-known songs — "Baby, What You Want Me to Do," "Bright Lights, Big City," "Honest I Do," "You Don't Have to Go," "Going to New York," "Ain't That Lovin' You Baby," and "Big Boss Man" — have become such an integral part of the standard blues repertoire, it's almost as if they have existed forever. Because his style was simple and easily imitated, his songs were accessible to just about everyone from high-school garage bands having a go at it, to Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich, Lou Rawls, Hank Williams, Jr., and the Rolling Stones, making him — in the long run — perhaps the most influential bluesman of all. His bottom-string boogie rhythm guitar patterns (all furnished by boyhood friend and longtime musical partner Eddie Taylor), simple two-string turnarounds, country-ish harmonica solos (all played in a neck-rack attachment hung around his neck), and mush-mouthed vocals were probably the first exposure most white folks had to the blues. And his music — lazy, loping, and insistent and constantly built and reconstructed single after single on the same sturdy frame — was a formula that proved to be enormously successful and influential, both with middle-aged blacks and young white audiences for a good dozen years. Jimmy Reed records hit the R&B charts with amazing frequency and crossed over onto the pop charts on many occasions, a rare feat for an unreconstructed bluesman. This is all the more amazing simply because Reed's music was nothing special on the surface; he possessed absolutely no technical expertise on either of his chosen instruments and his vocals certainly lacked the fierce declamatory intensity of a Howlin' Wolf or a Muddy Waters. But it was exactly that lack of in-your-face musical confrontation that made Jimmy Reed a welcome addition to everybody's record collection back in the '50s and '60s. And for those aspiring musicians who wanted to give the blues a try, either vocally or instrumentally (no matter what skin color you were born with), perhaps Billy Vera said it best in his liner notes to a Reed greatest-hits anthology: "Yes, anybody with a range of more than six notes could sing Jimmy's tunes and play them the first day Mom and Dad brought home that first guitar from Sears & Roebuck. I guess Jimmy could be termed the '50s punk bluesman."
There's so much joy in Jimmy Reed's music. And it's that joy that becomes self-evident every time you give one of his classic sides a spin. Although his bare-bones style influenced everyone from British Invasion combos to the entire school of Louisiana swamp blues artists (Slim Harpo and Jimmy Anderson in particular), the simple indisputable fact remains that — like so many of the other originators in the genre — there was only one Jimmy Reed.
Tracks:
01-High And Lonesome
02-Jimmie's Boogie
03-You Don't Have To Go
04-Boogie In The Dark
05-You Upset My Mind
06-She Don't Want Me No More
07-I Don't Go For That
08-Ain't That Loving You Baby
09-You Got Me So Dizzy
10-Honest I Do
11-The Sun Is Shinning
12-Ends And Odds
13-My Bitter Seed
14-Going To New York
15-Take Out Some Insurance
16-Baby What You Want Me To Do
17-Hush-Hush
18-Found Love
19-You Gonna Need My Help
20-Found Joy
21-Kind Of Lonesome
22-Blue Carnegie
23-Big Boss Man
24-Sugar Sugar
25-Jimmy's Rock
26-Bright Lights, Big City
27-I'm Going Upside Your Head
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