Bo Diddley - I'm A Man: The Chess Masters, 1955-1958 (2007/2019)

It is no exaggeration to call Little Walter the Jimi Hendrix of the electric harp: he redefined what the instrument was and what it could do, pushing the instrument so far into the future that his music still sounds modern decades after it was recorded. Little Walter wasn't the first musician to amplify the harmonica but he arguably was the first to make the harp sound electric, twisting twitching, vibrant runs out of his instrument; nearly stealing the show from Muddy Waters on his earliest Chess recordings; and so impressing Leonard Chess that he made Muddy keep Walter as his harpist even after Waters broke up his band. Chess also made Walter into his studio's house harpist and started to release Little Walter solo records with the instrumental "Juke" in 1952. "Juke" became a smash hit and turned Little Walter into a star, making him a steady presence on the '50s R&B charts. Like Chicago blues itself, Little Walter suffered a downturn of fortunes in the '60s, his career first eclipsed by the rise of rock & roll, but his decline was assisted in no small measure by the reckless alcoholic behavior that led to his early death in 1968. However, Hip-O Select's tremendous five-disc set The Complete Chess Masters proves that Little Walter remained capable of surprises until the end and that he's a major artist whose legacy only seems more formidable when it's heard as a whole, as it is here.