of rare released and unreleased Aristocrat, Chess and Checker sides; Parrot Records material which Chess purchased in 1959; and a few of the classic albums Chess has produced in the past that now deserve renewed attention."

The six albums now available manage to fulfill all those conditions at the same time as they get the whole series off to a most auspicious start. Editor-producer T. T. Swan has compiled a little of everything: Little Walter's rugged harmonica, the Wolf howlin' for all he's worth, the polished urban sound of Otis Rush, Elmore James sides mixing brisk bottleneck and sad saxophone—eight different blues masters in all, in performances ranging from the merely good to the sublimely great.

The two reissue albums should be mentioned first. Be advised that Evil is actually Howlin' Wolf's first album, Moanin' in the Moonlight, repackaged and rearranged; ditto the Muddy release, on the market over a decade as The Best of Muddy Waters. There's really nothing new to say about these two. They are simply among THE handful of classic Chicago blues albums. Hear Muddy, back when he was still more Mississippi than Chicago, wailing on "Hoochie Coochie," "Rollin' Stone," "Honey Bee," "I Just Want to Make Love to You," and eight other mojo workouts, while the Wolf chokes and moans through "How Many More Years," the "Smokestack Lightnin'" that every white blues group has stolen, "Evil," "Forty-Four" and more (even if a couple of Wolf's tunes were actually recorded in Memphis). If you don't own these two yet, you should.

Among the remaining albums, the set by Little Walter Jacobs (who died in 1968) rates most attention. For over a decade, blues collectors all over the world have been clamoring for Chess to release a second collection of Little Walter's Checker sides to complement his phenomenal first disc, The Best of Little Walter. Now here it is, 15 numbers strong, and the wait was worth it. Jacobs was the man — the harp genius whose easy-going but pungent style became the Chicago mainstay, and from whom everybody from Junior Wells to Paul Butterfield took his chops. Hate to See You Go also draws from Little Walter's peak sides of the Forties; you'll hear such luminous backers as Muddy, Bo Diddley, Otis Spann and, on drums, Fred Below. A moment of respectful silence for that last gentleman—Below arguably being the best blues d