Boss Blues Harmonica, released by the GRT Corporation in 1972, was at the time the most comprehensive collection of Little Walter’s quintessential blues harmonica recordings ever compiled. It was, literally, the best of Little Walter and more: the first disc was a straight reissue of the 1958 LP The Best of Little Walter, which featured Walter mostly in the company of Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers from the early ’50s, while disc two extended the survey to include combos with Robert Lockwood, Luther Tucker, and others from 1955 to 1959. In his excellent liner notes Pete Welding makes the case for Walter as unquestionably the single finest blues artist to have been produced by the postwar Chicago blues movement, asserting that Muddy, Elmore James, and other Chicago blues masters were essentially playing country blues that had been brought to the city while Walter’s music was forged in the crucible of the emerging and maturing postwar Chicago blues.
Disc 1: My Babe/Sad Hours/You’re So Fine/Last Night/Blues With A Feeling/Can’t Hold Out Much Longer//Juke/Mean Old World/Off The Wall/You Better Watch Yourself/Blue Lights/Tell Me Mama; Disc 2:Back Track/It’s Too Late Brother/Just A Feeling/Teenage Beat/Just Your Fool/Flying Saucer//I Got To Go/Shake Dancer/Too Late/Thunderbird/Ah’w Baby/Boom Boom Out Go the Lights
Released as a 2-LP set, Chess 2CH-60014, Boss Blues Harmonica, in 1972. Same tracks issued as another 2-LP set in the Chess Blues Masters Series with different cover art and liner notes on Chess 2ACMB-202, titled simply Little Walter, in 1976.
— Jim O’Neal
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