20th Century Masters: The Best Of Muddy Waters (Millennium Collection)
Muddy Waters's entry in MCA's20th Century Mastersis as good as the budget-minded series gets. True, it's a little lacking in the amount of material--just 12 tracks over the span of 32 minutes--but every one of these songs is a stone blues classic. The set is well focused, too, sticking with some of the great singles Waters recorded for the Chess label between 1951 and 1956--"I Just Want to Make Love to You," "Mannish Boy," "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man," "Got My Mojo Working," and other tunes that are the very cornerstone of Chicago blues. There are other worthy Waters collections covering roughly the same period, notablyHis Best 1947-55, but this set is fine, too. It's short, yes, but very, very sweet.--Daniel Durchholz