featuring Robert Nighthawk and Floyd Jones.

While all five albums are noteworthy and definite necessities for even the mildly serious blues collector, a couple stand out from the rest. The J. B. Lenoir set for one—Chess never really promoted the surprisingly topical blues of Lenoir enough—is thus the first J. B. Lenoir album available in the US, and it will go down as one of the tragic ironies of the blues that it occurs three years after his unfortunate death. Included here is his original "Eisenhower Blues," which was officially banned by the White House in 1956, his vibrant "Korea Blues" and "I'm In Korea" along with the deep "Let Me Die With the One I Love." Lenoir managed to effectively combine Lightning Hopkins' satire with an effervescence reminiscent of Elmore James.

While Lenoir never made it nationally (he was dead before the onslaught of B.B. King and Muddy Waters in the various Fillmores) he was one of the most popular and exciting practitioners in the Chicago small-club scene from the late Fifties until his demise. His rhythms and tunes are often similar, but the refinements he is able to coax out of his "Mama, Talk To Your Daughter" theme, for example, are truly amazing. He was at the height of his creative powers when the blues were at an ebb in this country, and he was actually more well-known and respected in Europe when he died. In the last years of his life he only managed weekend gigs while working as a janitor at the University of Chicago.

The other-illuminating album is the Lowell Fulson set which is mostly composed of vintage mid-Fifties Checker sides. In 1954, after having recorded for nearly a dozen small West Coast blues labels, Fulson had his biggest hit with his first Checker release—the classic "Reconsider Baby." A number of fine, often un-heralded singles followed over the years. The best of them appear here. From the oppressive "Trouble, Trouble" to the turgid "Low Society," the undertow of this veteran bluesman is impressive. Throughout, Fulson's vocals and stinging guitar-work are unique, frequently jazz-inspired in their relationship to the horns that he has lately favored on his Kent recordings. It is difficult to believe that cuts like "I Still Love You" or "Check Yourself" were recorded in 1955-57. And, for those of you who want to hear where Paul Butterfield got his vocal style, listen to Fulson sing "Tolling Bells." In fa