Detroit Blues: The Early 1950s

I picked this LP up for cheap a couple of weeks ago. It includes John Lee Hooker's first recording of "House Rent Boogie", recently fallen hero Eddie Kirkland's "No Shoes", "I Need $100" by One String Sam (one of those rare tracks where you see the name of the artist and the song title and think "There's no way this isn't good" and then get the record home and find out you're right), and most amazingly, Detroit Count's "Hastings Street Opera", a travelogue of the buckets o' blood that lined Detroit's pre-urban renewal main stem. Listen and learn. I guarantee you there was no guidebook to bars where the bartenders shoot everyone in there after 2 in the morning and you can get a steak sandwich that tastes like fish. The LP was in one of those heavy plastic library covers and a closer look revealed that some enterprising soul had snatched it from the New York Public Library's listening room. Whether they did it out of greed, or figuring that it was justified because one day soon the library wouldn't have a turntable, we'll never know, but in the end they did the world a favor because now it's available in the demented wilderness that we call the internet. There are a couple of annoying but brief left channel dropouts courtesy of my dying receiver, and, sadly, a skip on Bobo Jenkins's "Ten Below Zero", but it could have been a lot worse.

Baby Boy Warren - Sanafee
Baby Boy Warren - Baby Boy Blues
Baby Boy Warren - Mattie Mae
Baby Boy Warren - Chicken
Dr. Ross - Thirty Two Twenty
Bobo Jenkins - Ten Below Zero
Bobo Jenkins - Baby Don't You Want To Go
Eddie Kirkland - No Shoes
Detroit Count - Hastings Street Opera, Parts 1 & 2
L.C. Green - Remember Way Back
Big Maceo - Big City Blues
John Lee Hooker - House Rent Boogie
One String Sam - I Need $100
Brother Will Hairston - Alabama Bus

Addendum: Commenter BB points out an important fact that I forgot to mention, which is that the harmonica player on the Baby Boy Warren tracks is none other than Sonny Boy Williamson (the second Sonny Boy, aka Rice Miller, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Sonny Boy Williamson Too, or Sonny Boy Williamson Also, not to be confused with the first Sonny Boy Williamson). Thanks BB!