The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection: Little Walter - His Best

With his Chess recordings Little Walter single-handedly established a new musical vocabulary for the harmonica in the context of the electric blues band. As a youth he studied under rural harmonica masters like Sonny Boy Williamson, but by the time he reached Chicago he had entirely reconfigured his playing style to suit the earthshaking volume of the amplified bands that played along 47th Street. Though Little Walter cut his teeth as a session player on sides by Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and others, his solo sides show him in an entirely new light, as an accomplished blues singer in addition to an undeniable virtuoso on his instrument. The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection assembles twenty of Little Walter’s finest sides and features some of Chicago’s most accomplished blues players, amongst them Willie Dixon and even Bo Diddley, who lends his trademark rumble to the great “Rollercoaster.” This collection is beyond essential, and the material here easily measures up to anything released on Chess during the label’s mid-‘50s heyday.