Blues Unlimited #153 - Prestige and Bluesville Keyboard Legends

Bluesville was a label that got it's start in 1959, and was owned and operated by parent company Prestige Records. And just as Prestige would become famous for their lengthy series of fine Jazz recordings, likewise, Bluesville would become renowned for the 90 or so albums they put out, on a broad range of Blues legends -- some new, some old, and some overlooked and forgotten.

Prestige had been founded in 1949 by Bob Weinstock, and 10 years later, he brought in a PhD student, Kenneth Goldstein, to head up the Bluesville division. Working in the field with producers like Sam Charters, Art Rosenbaum, and Chris Strachwitz, Bluesville recorded such legends as Lightnin' Hopkins and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (whose collective albums made up almost 20% of Bluesville's entire output!), as well as stalwarts like Memphis Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Williams, and some of the overlooked and forgotten -- like Scrapper Blackwell, Pete Franklin, and Furry Lewis, to name but a few.

According to former Prestige/Bluesville employee Sam Charters, it was thanks to Weinstock's "part time" job of commodities trader -- he apparently guessed right more than he guessed wrong -- that enabled the funding for these numerous projects. "The word around the office was that we could do a lot of Blues recording because Bob had guessed right on the wholesale price of eggs," wrote Charters, some decades after the fact. In 1961, Weinstock sent Charters on an extended tour of the Southern states, where he recorded a number of fine albums along the way.

Bluesville stopped issuing LPs in 1966, and new releases were shuffled over to either Prestige, or their Milestone subsidiary (Prestige maintained a number of smaller imprints at any one given time). In 1971, Fantasy purchased Prestige -- and all of their subsidiary labels -- and maintained an extensive reissue program for some time. In the meantime, Kenneth Goldstein finished his PhD, and became an important author and scholar, overseeing the recording and/or production of over 500 albums relating to folk and world music during his distinguished career.

In this episode of Blues Unlimited, we take a look at some of the keyboard legends that recorded for Bluesville and Prestige -- including tracks from Otis Spann's 1964 classic, The Blues Never Die, as well a few treats from one of our favorite, underrated pianists, Lafayette Leake (who accompanied Billy Boy Arnold and Homesick James on their Prestige albums). Piano Blues legends from Prestige and Bluesville, on this episode of Blues Unlimited.

Bluesville was a label that got it's start in 1959, and was owned and operated by parent company Prestige Records. And just as Prestige would become famous for their lengthy series of fine Jazz recordings, likewise, Bluesville would become renowned for the 90 or so albums they put out, on a broad range of Blues legends -- some new, some old, and some overlooked and forgotten.

Prestige had been founded in 1949 by Bob Weinstock, and 10 years later, he brought in a PhD student, Kenneth Goldstein, to head up the Bluesville division. Working in the field with producers like Sam Charters, Art Rosenbaum, and Chris Strachwitz, Bluesville recorded such legends as Lightnin' Hopkins and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (whose collective albums made up almost 20% of Bluesville's entire output!), as well as stalwarts like Memphis Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Williams, and some of the overlooked and forgotten -- like Scrapper Blackwell, Pete Franklin, and Furry Lewis, to name but a few.

According to former Prestige/Bluesville employee Sam Charters, it was thanks to Weinstock's "part time" job of commodities trader -- he apparently guessed right more than he guessed wrong -- that enabled the funding for these numerous projects. "The word around the office was that we could do a lot of Blues recording because Bob had guessed right on the wholesale price of eggs," wrote Charters, some decades after the fact. In 1961, Weinstock sent Charters on an extended tour of the Southern states, where he recorded a number of fine albums along the way.

Bluesville stopped issuing LPs in 1966, and new releases were shuffled over to either Prestige, or their Milestone subsidiary (Prestige maintained a number of smaller imprints at any one given time). In 1971, Fantasy purchased Prestige -- and all of their subsidiary labels -- and maintained an extensive reissue program for some time. In the meantime, Kenneth Goldstein finished his PhD, and became an important author and scholar, overseeing the recording and/or production of over 500 albums relating to folk and world music during his distinguished career.

In this episode of Blues Unlimited, we take a look at some of the keyboard legends that recorded for Bluesville and Prestige -- including tracks from Otis Spann's 1964 classic, The Blues Never Die, as well a few treats from one of our favorite, underrated pianists, Lafayette Leake (who accompanied Billy Boy Arnold and Homesick James on their Prestige albums). Piano Blues legends from Prestige and Bluesville, on this episode of Blues Unlimited.