That song and 49 more can be found on Cincinnati Blues, an excellent and essential two-CD set from England's Catfish label. The collection will be released in the United States on Tuesday. With its broad scope, Cincinnati Blues is as much an overview of early blues styles as it is a document of the local scene. With its rural guitars and loping rhythms, it's a sound shared by the jug bands of Louisville and Memphis. Jug bands started in Louisville, entertaining the crowds at the Kentucky Derby, but the most popular groups came out of Memphis.
Piano blues is represented by three non-Cincinnati artists who happened to record here.
Pianist Jesse James was recalled by the late Pigmeat Jarrett as living here in the '50s. This doesn't mean, of course, that there were no Cincinnati blues pianists. But the local blues artists who traveled to Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, New York and Atlanta to record were country bluesmen, probably chosen by the record companies to compete with the popular jug bands and guitarists from fellow river cities Louisville and Memphis. Had the record companies sent field units here specifically in search of blues, it's likely that we'd have an even more varied portrait of local blues. That's where the good, hustlin' women get the good cocaine.