Canned Heat Blues’ is in one sense a Prohibition-era period piece, a lament by Mississippi blues guitarist Tommy Johnson on the evils of drinking concoctions made from canned heat (Sterno) in place of liquor. Johnson was in fact well known as a canned heat consumer and although this and his other releases on Victor from his 1928 Memphis sessions in Memphis were all popular and influential, his recording career was soon over. But there was beauty in his music, which was taken up by a host of other blues singers, and this record inspired a blues-loving rock band from California to take the name Canned Heat in the 1960s.
