Muddy Waters ‎– The Real Folk Blues / More Real Folk Blues (2002)

Waters' The Real Folk Blues and More Real Folk Blues, combined here onto one CD, were not exactly random collections of tracks -- the quality was too consistently high for them to just have been picked out of a hat. Still, it was a pretty arbitrary grouping of items that he recorded between 1947 and 1964. In fact, they hail from throughout his whole stint at Chess, virtually; at the time these albums were first issued, though, all of the material on More Real Folk Blues was from the late '40s and early '50s. They didn't exactly concentrate on his most well-known songs, but they didn't entirely neglect them either, including "Mannish Boy," "Walking Thru the Park," "The Same Thing," "Rollin' & Tumblin' Part One," "She's Alright," and "Honey Bee," amongst somewhat more obscure selections. So ultimately, this disc's usefulness depends on your fussiness as a collector -- if it's the only Waters you ever pick up, you'll still have a good idea of his greatness, and if you don't mind getting some tracks you might already have on more avowedly best-of sets, you'll probably hear some stuff you don't already have in your collection. On the basis of the music alone, it's fine material, representing his hardest-rocking electric blues ("Mannish Boy," "Walking Thru the Park"), his most rural down-home sides (particularly the earliest sides, on which his only accompanist is bassist Big Crawford), and more idiosyncratic cuts like "The Same Thing," with Willie Dixon's captivatingly out-of-tune bass. Incidentally, just to make matters confusing, Waters did record a folk-oriented album in the mid-'60s, but it's not one of the two records included here -- it's his entirely separate Folk Singer album, from 1964.