Consumer Guide Album

Buddy Guy & Junior Wells: Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play the Blues [Rhino Handmade, 2005]
The classic Guy-Wells album remains Delmark's 1966 Hoodoo Man Blues, which is credited to Wells. Runner-up is this relaxed, whiteboy-garnished 1972 set, now augmented with nine previously unissued new songs that fit the bill and four previously unissued alternate mixes that don't. Guy gets major vocal space, top-billed because in 1972 his expansive guitar chops had some racial optimist at Atlantic seeing stardom. He'll never be as distinctive a singer--Wells had a sound. But the older man gave Guy valuable laying back lessons, which he forgets to excellent effect whamming home Little Brother Montgomery's "First Time I Met the Blues." [Recyclables]