The Real Folk Blues/More Real Folk Blues [MCA]

1	Mannish Boy 2:57
2	Screamin' and Cryin' 3:07
3	Just to Be With You 3:15
4	Walking Thru the Park 2:47
5	Walkin' Blues 2:57
6	Canary Bird 2:45
7	The Same Thing 2:44
8	Gypsy Woman 2:34
9	Rollin' & Tumblin', Pt. 1 3:00
10	Forty Days and Forty Nights 2:53
11	Little Geneva 2:47
12	You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had 2:56
13	Sad Letter Blues 3:01
14	You're Gonna Need My Help I Said 3:07
15	Sittin' Here and Drinkin' (Whiskey Blues) 2:35
16	Down South Blues 2:53
17	Train Fare Home Blues 2:47
18	Kind Hearted Woman 2:36
19	Appealing Blues (Hello Little Girl) 2:49
20	Early Morning Blues 3:09
21	Too Young to Know 3:13
22	She's Alright 2:30
23	Landlady 2:38
24	Honey Bee 3:20

Barnes & Noble

Collecting two seminal Muddy Waters albums of the 1960s, this essential disc draws from a wide selection of classic blues stretching from 1948 to 1964, all of it prime material from the most important period of Waters’s career. From the minimal duo setting of “Kind Hearted Woman,” with just Muddy and bassist Ernest “Big” Crawford, to “Walking Thru the Park,” on which Waters is accompanied by a full electrified Chicago blues band, we can trace the musical evolution of one of the greatest of Chicago blues masters. Waters, playing stinging slide guitar and singing with a virile authority that few other bluesmen attained, is in magnificent form throughout; as he’s joined by such brilliant players as bassist Willie Dixon, harmonica giant Little Walter, and guitarist Jimmy Rodgers, Waters’s music expands from its traditional southern roots, until it blossoms into the paragon of modern Chicago blues. Add Waters’s Anthology to this set, and you have a comprehensive picture of a great American musician. Steve Futterman

All Music Guide

Waters' The Real Folk Blues and More Real Folk Blues, combined here onto one CD, were not exactly random collections of tracks -- the quality was too consistently high for them to just have been picked out of a hat. Still, it was a pretty arbitrary grouping of items that he recorded between 1947 and 1964. In fact, they hail from throughout his whole stint at Chess, virtually; at the time these albums were first issued, though, all of the material on More Real Folk Blues was from the late '40s and early '50s. They didn't exactly concentrate on his most well-known songs, but they didn't entirely neglect them either, including "Mannish Boy," "Walking Thru the Park," "The Same Thing," "Rollin' & Tumblin' Part One," "She's Alright," and "Honey Bee," amongst somewhat more obscure selections. So ultimately, this disc's usefulness depends on your fussiness as a collector -- if it's the only Waters you ever pick up, you'll still have a good idea of his greatness, and if you don't mind getting some tracks you might already have on more avowedly best-of sets, you'll probably hear some stuff you don't already have in your collection. On the basis of the music alone, it's fine material, representing his hardest-rocking electric blues ("Mannish Boy," "Walking Thru the Park"), his most rural down-home sides (particularly the earliest sides, on which his only accompanist is bassist Big Crawford), and more idiosyncratic cuts like "The Same Thing," with Willie Dixon's captivatingly out-of-tune bass. Incidentally, just to make matters confusing, Waters did record a folk-oriented album in the mid-'60s, but it's not one of the two records included here -- it's his entirely separate Folk Singer album, from 1964. Richie Unterberger