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Willie Mabon, born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1925, was a blues singer, pianist and songwriter, who was very much of the Chicago school of blues performers, and enjoyed a career peak with two US R&B No. 1s in 1953, although he never reached the long-term heights of some of his more renowned contemporaries. He eventually moved to Europe in the 1970s to become part of the thriving blues scene in France and the UK. This 42-track 2- CD collection comprises most of his releases during this era on the Apollo, Aristocrat, Parrot, Chess, Mad, Formal & Solar labels, plus other Chess recordings which were not released at the time. It features his two No. R&B hits, “I Don’t Know” and “I’m Mad” and his 1955 R&B Top 10 hit “Poison Ivy”, along with other notable recordings including Willie Dixon’s “Seventh Son”. As a city blues artist, his songwriting often had a wry, tongue-in-cheek approach to social commentary, and his music had an urbane and stylishly streetwise feel, which comes across through this trawl across the primary era of his career.
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