Excavating The Blues

I'm starting to think of myself as an archaeologist when I go to the - can't call it record anymore -to the music store. I'm still willing to dig through the mounds of bargain CDs searching for the discarded gems of Chicago, the Mississippi Delta, Detroit, the whole universe of blues, jazz, funk and soul that barely exists in the chain store galaxy. True, they do relegate tiny categories in distant aisles to the genres, but the real action takes place out front.

You can spot them as you approach the corporate logo mounted on some giant neon arch that is visible halfway across the mall, the rows of hastily assembled wire bins brimming with this week's offerring of already obsolete DVDs and CDs priced to move at 3.99 - 7.99 (funny how nobody ever says 4.00 or 8.00 - it's like the .01 makes a big difference ?). In preparation for a dig last week, I steeled myself with firm resolve - I would not buy anything that cost more than ten bucks. Armed with only my debit card, I began my methodical examination of the glittering plastic sea arrayed in the CD repository beneath, orange dots across their spines tossing like whitecaps in an ocean of "loss leaders" - basically artists dumped unceremoniously by the labels.

Forty five minutes of intense scrutiny unearthed Little Walter's Greatest Hits for about five bucks, plus Leon Russell's and Tina Turner's Greatest Hits at seven each. A word about alleged "hit" collections - make sure you read the back carefully to ensure it's not the typical scam of including one decent song with lots of sort of hits - a vicious fraud perpetrated on me in numerous purchases of James Brown collections or - even worse - Canned Heat.

Case in point - Henry Vestine passed away in October, so I thought I'd try to find some really good Vestine/Canned Heat licks to play on my show. The guy's face went blank when I asked innocently at the music store in what turned out to be a vain attempt to find anything by the group at all - I wanted "Evil Woman" and "Fried Hockey Boogie" off the one and only Heat album I ever bought. My new found buddy searched his database only to announce that the tunes in question were available on a French re-release of the original (ironically, I found out later that Henry actually passed away at the end of the band's tour in France- is there a link??) which nobody in the Western Hemisphere has a copy of.

Over the years, my expeditions have uncovered lost treasures in the hundreds: Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker back to back, dozens of re-released, re-mastered versions of Robert Johnson, not to mention Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Howling Wolf, or Paul Butterfield, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Lonnie Mack, or Albert King, Leadbelly, and Lightnin' Hopkins - just to name a very few - plus all of those Motown Golden Hits compilations - the Temps, the Miracles, Jr Walker , Stevie, etc - , as well as all the Jukebox collections, the Blues one being superior for its inclusion of artists like Champion Jack Dupree, Memphis Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, Jimmy Witherspoon, Lowell Fulsom, Bessie Smith , Big Joe Williams- the greats that rarely get the recognition they deserve- if any at all.

There's a great big wilderness of unexplored low price bins out there waiting for intrepid explorers just like you. I say - forget the Pyramids, the Acropolis and the Taj Mahal - head for your local record - I mean - music store instead.