Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Piano Blues

1	How Long Blues / Jimmy Yancey 3:03
2	Boogie Woogie Prayer, Pt. 1 / The Boogie Woogie Boys 2:22
3	How Long Blues / Count Basie Orchestra 3:02
4	Driftin' Blues / Johnny Moore's Three Blazers 3:13
5	The Fat Man / Fats Domino 2:36
6	Tatum Pole Boogie / Art Tatum 2:25
7	Tipitina / Professor Longhair 2:38
8	What'd I Say, Pts. 1 & 2 / Ray Charles 6:28
9	Good Morning Mr. Blues / Otis Spann 3:22
10	Backward Country Boy Blues / Duke Ellington 6:20
11	Blue Monk / Thelonious Monk 6:14
12	Piney Brown Blues / Jay McShann 5:25
13	Mission Ranch Blues / Jay McShann 3:48
14	The Ladder / Big Joe Turner 2:21
15	Honey Dripper / Dr. John 3:36
16	World Full of People / Henry Townsend 4:01
17	Big Chief / Dr. John 3:00
18	Carmel Blues / Pinetop Perkins 2:59
19	Travelin' Blues / Dave Brubeck 3:20
20	How Long Blues / Pete Jolly 5:14

Barnes & Noble

The quintessential instrument of the blues may still be the guitar, but the piano has played a large part in the music almost from the beginning, and it continues to do so as the blues evolves. This smart collection ropes together performances from keyboard masters in various genres, each giving a distinctive take on the blues. Thus, the New Orleans giant Professor Longhair shares space with jazz masters Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Count Basie, and Thelonious Monk, who sidle up to R&B legends Ray Charles and Fats Domino, blues paragons Otis Spann and Jimmy Yancy, and contemporary blues mavens including Dr. John, Marcia Ball, and Henry Townsend. Despite all the historical and stylistic differences represented here, the performances are inextricably connected. The key to the set’s success is, of course, the musical glue of the blues, whose strains infuse America’s popular music as a whole. Steve Futterman

All Music Guide

Clint Eastwood's chapter in Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues centers around the piano's role in the development of the blues. In typical Eastwood fashion, he goes not for the easy or common associations of the instrument with the music, but looks expansively at how the restricted sonics of the piano as a melodic instrument and its possibilities as a percussion instrument created a spiralling and deep-rooted bottom for the music in all genres of popular music as it developed in the 20th century. Here is Jimmy Yancey's primitive and profound version of "How Long Blues" juxtaposed against the harmonically sophisticated read of the song by Count Basie and his orchestra. The New Orleans blues are celebrated in their modern incarnations -- as they contributed to the architecture of rock & roll by the inclusion of Fats Domino's "Fat Man" and Joe Turner's "The Ladder." The blues as exemplified in soul music as it came from R&B are revealed by Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" -- both parts -- and as they informed modern jazz in the glorious trio recording of "Backwards Country Boy Blues" by Max Roach, Charles Mingus, and Duke Ellington, and in Thelonious Monk's "Blue Monk." What Eastwood is trying to show in the film and on the soundtrack is how the 12-bar blues was not only a platform, but a devil's playground for experimentation, rhythmic invention, and harmonic extrapolation. And he succeeds in this aural document by creating the most provocative of the series' soundtracks. Thom Jurek