At some point every band makes a move towards commercial success. Accolades for purity of motivation and peerless references are great, but selling a few albums carries its own kind of rush. Oh sure, by 2011, The Black Keys had already hit paydirt licensing music for Victoria's Secret ads, among other brands, but the duo wanted their music rather than their opportunism to be respected. Routinely crediting The Cramps and The Clash while still sounding like the rough 'n' ready garage band from Akron, Ohio, that they'd been since the beginning made the journey to larger musical success problematic. Enter Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton, who produced guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney's preceding album, 2010's Brothers; recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama, it continued the Black Keys' move away from a lo-fi sound. Advised by Burton to record more upbeat material that would play well in the arena-sized venues they were aiming for, the pair convened at Auerbach's new Easy Eye Sound Studio in Nashville and began to work up fresh material. Like all Black Keys records, riff rock and Auerbach and Carney's back-and-forth interplay are the foundation, but now their usual dirty blues vibe gave way to a more straight ahead early rock and roll tone. Danger Mouse also became an active part of the songwriting process for the first time. Fast tempos and more pronounced pop hooks were the immediate focus. The opener "Lonely Boy," is impossible to resist. In "Dead and Gone" handclaps and the album's three female background singers Leisa Hans, Heather Rigdon and Ashley Wilcoxson beef up the poppy choruses. Recorded by Kennie Takahashi and Collin Dupuis, and mixed by Tchad Blake, the sound here is enhanced with plenty of reverb making everything that much larger in the process. Tunes like the working girl paean, "Money Maker," where Auerbach sings, "I wanna buy some time but don't have a dime," sound oversized and very much arena-ready. "Sister" is the Keys' elemental riff rock at its best, this time fleshed out by Danger Mouse on keyboard. Touches like the squiggly guitar line in "Run Right Back" confirm musical evolutions in their usual jam-it-up method. This reissue contains 20 tracks from a previously unreleased concert from Portland, Maine, an 11-track BBC Radio 1 session from 2012, and a 9-track 2011 Electro-Vox rehearsal session recorded prior to the 2012 El Camino tour. While both live sets are stacked with tracks from Brothers ("Howlin for You," "Tighten Up") and El Camino, the BBC set has a closer, densely packed sound, while the live sound of the Portland show in front of a rabid audience is huge and reverberant. The rehearsal session is predictably loose with slower tempos, though the arrangements are similar to what was eventually released. This reissue does bring up questions: is ten years long enough to create the demand and perspective necessary for a successful reissue? Have Keys fans even stopped listening to their original copies yet or is this more rampant commercialism from a band famous for it? Of course, it may also be that Auerbach and Carney are closing a chapter. Stay tuned for the next decade. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

The first time Claude Nobs, the future founder of the Montreux Festival, went to the United States was in 1965 to Chicago, where as soon as he got off the plane, he found himself immersed  in a tour of the local blues clubs. His night ended in a daze, after concerts by Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters with shots of whisky served by Willie Dixon. A great moment in his personal history, a memory that must have resurfaced a few years later when the stages of Montreux were honoured by the presence of Muddy Waters in 1972, 1974 and 1977. This best-of selection of the three concerts in 16 tracks begins sublimely with the unarguable Nobody Know Chicago Like I Do. The father of modern Chicago blues, he is, as so often, at his best accompanied by the cream of musical talent (Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Bill Wyman, Pinetop Perkins...), faithful to the style he created twenty years earlier. Muddy Waters performs all his hits (Mannish Boy, I’m Ready, Got My Mojo Workin’, Rollin’ And Tumblin’, I’m Ready…)  and other lesser-known numbers with all the class of an old cat that has not lost any of its sensual suppleness nor its wild instinct. Muddy Waters must have sung these songs a thousand times, but he still manages to give them a magical dimension. The interpretation is profound, the recording perfect in its clarity and density: this monster compilation of the Montreux years goes immediately to the top 5 of Muddy Waters' best live albums. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

Slide guitarist and songwriter John Campbell was a man driven. Before his untimely death, he had pulled out all the stops to play a music that was full of mystery, pathos, dark energy, and plenty of rock & roll strut 'n' growl; it could be frightening in its intensity. Howlin' Mercy was the last of two recordings for Elektra, and is by far the heavier of the two. As displayed by its opening track, "Ain't Afraid of Midnight," Campbell was a considerable slide guitarist who owed his skill to the bluesmen like Lightnin' Hopkins (from his home state of Texas), Fred McDowell, and a few others. His solos are wrangling, loose, and shambolic; they are undeniably dark and heavy. They cut with elegance across the rhythms and melodies in his songs. This is followed by a version of "When the Levee Breaks" that is a direct counter to and traditional reclamation of the Led Zep version and places it back firmly in the blues canon. As evidenced by "Saddle Up My Pony," Campbell was equally skilled at transmuting the Delta blues and framing them in a very modern context without taking anything away from their chilling, spare power and poetry. And in the modern rock and blues idiom, he was a master, as evidenced by the stomp and roll of "Firin' Line"; "Written in Stone"; and the epic, swamp blues cum overdriven scorcher "Wolf Among the Lambs." This final moment is perhaps Campbell's greatest on record in that it embodies all of his strengths and reveals none of them to be contradictions. Campbell was living and playing in New York at the end of his life, and that city's conflicting energies are reflected in his playing and writing. They needed each other, it seems, and if ever there were a Delta blues record that visited the Texas roadhouse and settled on the streetcorners of NYC, this is it. Awesome.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Moanin' in the Moonlight was Howlin' Wolf's first collection of sides for the Chess label, packed with great tunes and untouchable performances by the man himself. The last word in electric Chicago blues, Wolf was possessed of fine guitar and harp skills, a voice that could separate skin from bone, and a sheer magnetism and charisma that knew (and has known) no equal. This disc is outstanding throughout, and features some of his best sides, including "How Many More Years," "Smokestack Lightnin'," "Evil," and "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)." Highly recommended for the uninitiated and a must for collectors.© TiVo Staff /TiVo

Born in Aberdeen, Mississippi, Chester Burnett, better known by his stage name Howlin' Wolf, helped modernize the country blues with his powerful vocal style and harmonica work and his ability to connect with an audience no matter what stage he prowled. This album, though, originally released in 1969 on the Chess Records subsidiary Cadet Records, is hardly typical Wolf, and the bluesman himself hated it, which may in some way have contributed to the album's odd cult standing. The idea was as simple as it was probably misguided, an attempt to modernize Wolf's sound into psychedelic Jimi Hendrix land, and the results were, well, odd at best, and laughable and lamentable at worst, and through no fault of Wolf's, who obviously tried his best to make sense of all of it. Howlin' Wolf completists will want this for its novelty value, but it's far from an accurate portrait of this powerful bluesman's talent and appeal.© Steve Leggett /TiVo

At six foot three and 270 pounds, Chester Burnett was a bear of a man, but his voice, rough and harsh as broken Delta glass, was what really gave him dimension. A powerful blues shouter out of the Charley Patton mold, Burnett (or Howlin' Wolf, as he came to be known) brought a feral fire to his vocals that made him sound like a gale force hurricane in front of the microphone. But he was far from a loose cannon. He had remarkable control over that voice, as the first track from this wonderful collection of his classic Chess sides makes clear. "Moanin' at Midnight," recorded in 1958 for Sam Phillips (Phillips promptly sold the master to Chicago's Chess Records), is nothing more than an amped-up and electrified field holler, but Wolf's subtle, wordless vocal phrasing makes it carry enough pain, suffering, pride, desperation, and resignation to fill the world to breaking, all in a single rocking performance that hits like a brick to the head. The Chess brothers recorded Wolf frequently in the next dozen or so years, wisely pairing him with guitarist Hubert Sumlin and bassist/songwriter Willie Dixon more often than not, and Wolf's output for the label between 1958 and 1964 forms the core of one of the greatest legacies in the history of the blues. All of his key Chess singles are here, including "Smokestack Lightning," his redefinitions of the Mississippi Sheiks' "Sittin' on Top of the World" and Skip James' "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" (reborn as "Killing Floor" in Wolf's hands), and his signature versions of Dixon's "Backdoor Man," "Spoonful," "The Red Rooster," and "I Ain't Superstitious," making this set a marvelous introduction to one of the most powerful voices in recorded history. What you need to hear is here. [The Definitive Collection contains the same tracks as the 1997 MCA release His Best].© Steve Leggett /TiVo

Howlin' Wolf's second album brings together some of the blues great's best singles from the late '50s and early '60s. Also available as a fine two-fer with his debut, Moanin' in the Moonlight, the so-called Rockin' Chair Album represents the cream of Wolf's Chicago blues work. Those tracks afforded classic status are many, including "Spoonful," "The Red Rooster," "Wang Dang Doodle," "Back Door Man," "Shake for Me," and "Who's Been Talking?" Also featuring the fine work of Chess house producer and bassist Willie Dixon and guitarist Hubert Sumlin, Rockin' Chair qualifies as one of pinnacles of early electric blues, and is an essential album for any quality blues collection.© Stephen Cook /TiVo

For the casual blues fan with a scant knowledge of the Wolf, this 1971 pairing, with Eric Clapton, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts from the Rolling Stones, Ringo Starr, and other British superstars, appears on the surface to be one hell of a super session. But those lofty notions are quickly dispelled once you slip this disc into the player and hit play. While it's nowhere near as awful as some blues purists make it out to be, the disparity of energy levels between the Wolf and his U.K. acolytes is not only palpable but downright depressing. Wolf was a very sick man at this juncture and Norman Dayron's non-production idea of just doing remakes of earlier Chess classics is wrongheaded in the extreme. The rehearsal snippet of Wolf trying to teach the band how to play Willie Dixon's "Little Red Rooster" shows just how far off the mark the whole concept of this rock superstar mélange truly is. Even Eric Clapton, who usually welcomes any chance to play with one of his idols, has criticized this album repeatedly in interviews, which speaks volumes in and of itself.© Cub Koda /TiVo

Like most things, listening to the blues should be approached with a sense of wonder, as if listening for the first time. Such is the way one should listen to John Lee Hooker’s music. The tracks in this album are among John Lee Hooker’s first, dating back 70 years on average. His fans will know his tracks by heart; others will at least recognise the style. And yet, listening and re-listening to these tracks is never a chore. On the classic Boogie Chillen, his breakthrough hit, we are reminded of how astounding his work is. His way of composing songs without a plan, the rusty-metal sound, the voice of this charming Prince of Darkness, and the way he taps his foot along to the rhythm and smooth boogie… no one played like that before John Lee Hooker, no one could come close. Many tried afterwards, but could never manage to completely imitate the original. Ailing from Mississippi before settling in Detroit where he began his career, John Lee Hooker created this style, and there he remained his whole life. Later on, he released records in which he was accompanied by other musicians, even white blues, rock and jazz stars (like Miles Davis). But it’s here, alone as an already revered artist on these twenty tracks, that he made his legend. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

After issuing Complete sets dedicated to Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Little Walter, and Bo Diddley, Hip-O Select finally got around to the titanic Howlin’ Wolf in the fall of 2011, releasing Smokestack Lightning: The Complete Chess Masters 1951-1960, a 97-track, four-disc limited-edition box set containing everything the Wolf cut in his first decade of recording. Although the first years of the ‘60s treated him exceptionally well -- many classic sessions arrived in the first few years of the decade, many showcased on 1962’s peerless “rocking chair” album -- this is where his legacy lies: with the spooky, primal howl that kicks off “Moanin’ at Midnight” and the scores of earthy boogies and down-and-dirty grinds that followed. Smokestack Lightning stacks up plenty of alternate takes, a good chunk of them never released in the U.S., but the repetition doesn’t slow the set down or turn it repetitive. Instead, the repeated alternate takes sit well with the treasures -- many justly celebrated, some unearthed -- all adding up to a testament to Howlin' Wolf’s unearthly, mighty force.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Classic debut consisting of stunningly literate pub rockers fusing rock tradition, singer/songwriter skill, and punk spirit.© TiVo