Blues vinyl deals on Amazon UK

Buying blues vinyl without overpaying

Pre-war blues presents a problem no reissue can fully solve: the source is often a shellac disc rather than a tape, because the tape never existed. What separates a good reissue from a poor one is the quality of that transfer and how heavily it has been noise-reduced. Over-processed transfers sound smeared and lifeless; well-done ones keep the surface noise and the performance intact.

Post-war electric blues is more straightforward, and Chess, Stax and Vee-Jay catalogue reissues are generally well cut and discount regularly. This is a genre where compilations genuinely earn their place, since many of the great recordings were singles rather than album tracks.

As with jazz, be wary of very cheap pressings of famous names from labels you have never heard of. The recordings are old enough to be out of copyright in parts of Europe, which produces a steady supply of legal but indifferent editions. If the price looks too good against everything else on the page, that is usually what you are looking at.

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