I Have To Paint My Face – Various Artists / Arhoolie CD-432

Description

CD 432
In the summer of 1960 I had made my first trip through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi with British blues scholar, Paul Oliver and his wife Valerie. Paul’s homework and dedication to meet, interview and record a good many older blues artists for a series of programs sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was in large measure responsible for the success of that first trip. This CD brings you the sounds of the Mississippi blues as we were able to meet and document them during that very hot and humid summer. The rediscovery of several historic blues legends like Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Big Boy Crudup along with the discovery of the remarkable Fred McDowell, was still to come!
— Excerpt from liner notes by Chris Strachwitz

1. I Have To Paint My Face
2. Big Road Blues
3. I Stand And Wonder
4. Texas Blues
5. Night Shirt Blues
6. Mercury Blues
7. Hollandale Blues
8. The Slop
9. Stella Ruth
10. God Don’t Like Ugly
11. Rooster Blues
12. Barbershop Rhythm
13. Going Back To Texas
14. Blues And Trouble
15. Lonely Widower
16. Lost Love Blues
17. Married Woman Blues
18. Love’s Honeydripper
19. Desert Blues
20. One Thin Dime
21. Butch’s Blues
22. Forty Four Blues
23. Chicago Blues

REVIEW

“…wonderful music, not only Chatmon’s poignant and sometimes bitter songs but also driving and exciting sides by Robert Curtis Smith, the famous barber Wade Walton and Jasper Love; very few of these artists had other opportunities to make more recordings and that’s a great pity…everything is excellent and there are no low points. Another one to get, definitely.”

-Robert Sacré, Blues Gazette