Various - Streetwalking Blues FLAC album

Drawn from treasured and valuable historic 78 rpm single song recordings, this is a collection of dirty blues numbers sung by some of the best blues and entertainment artist from the first half of the 20th century.

These were the sort of songs that would be injected into a live show to spice things up, to keep it interesting, and of course to give you something to talk about on Monday morning at work. All of the songs are sexual in their nature, are even more pornographic when sung by a woman, uncomplicated, laced with double entendres, and gathered here together for your pleasure. I’m not going to try and tell you to drop this album onto your turntable during an evening over dinner with friends, though it will cause a sly smile to inch across your face as you realize that sexual implications that have been inserted into contemporary songs have a long and rich heritage, and are nothing new. That being said, one can only imagine what place suggestive recordings like these held back in more conservative times, where album sides like these would be buried somewhere deep in the back of one’s record collection.

With many of these tracks being nearly one hundred years old, they will seem oddly out of place with today’s sonically layered sound, as these songs are from an era that most of us have no connection to whatsoever, like back & white television with no remote control, it’s just interesting to note that this sort of music was considered over the top, raunchy, though inspirational in the fact that it’s never really fallen out of favor, more that it’s been repackaged for todays market, and has been since I first began listening to music.

So consider this a novelty, or perhaps a musical history lesson of sorts, though in a either case, Street Walking Blues should be heard at least once.

*** The Fun Facts: The album’s photo was taken in 1912 and is part of the E.J. Belllocq’s haunting collection prostitutes in New Orleans’ red light district of Storyville. The book is entitled Storyville Portraits. Areas were called ‘Red Light’ districts because those who worked on the trains (a lonely life much like sailors always being away from home), would stop in towns along the rail-line seeking a bit of female comfort, and would hang their red-lensed foul smelling lanterns outside of the houses, lighting up the whole area, inspiring the term ‘Red Light District.”

Review by Jenell Kesler