May as well call this "Chess Greatest Hits (Except for Chuck Berry)". A nice collection. Most are in mono, and one of the stereo tracks is presented here twice: the original stereo version and a folded-to-mono version that I did for kicks. Stumbled across this at my local store. Seemed cheap enough :-)
All the tracks for this box were digitized in 1988 or so, and the LPs were made from that. I don't have other Chess sets to compare to, so I don't know what is "normal" for the Chess sound, but the spectrum on these LP's has a haircut at about 20kHz. See pic in the artwork folder. (It's the same on the Chuck Berry box, so it's not my fault.)
Filenames are to the Various Artists standard, as are the tags. But the title goes to Willie D cuz that's what the box says. You gonna argue with a box?
Enjoy, please!
From allmusic:
Review by Bruce Eder
"This was the most unusual, and probably the most difficult to assemble of MCA's Chess Box series, mostly because of the unusual nature of Willie Dixon's contribution to Chess Records. To be sure, Dixon rates a place in the history of the label right alongside that of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter, but his role was more subtle than that of a performer (indeed, two of the half-dozen recordings here that feature Dixon as a singer were previously unreleased). So he is all over this two-CD set, as a songwriter, producer, and bassist, and occasionally as a singer as well, but the unifying element are the Dixon songs, and he is the only blues songwriter to be honored by a major label with a retrospective of this type. Since he was not the performer on most of this material, but, rather, was working to mesh his material with the styles and sensibilities of a vast range of players, the sounds contained on these two CDs are a lot more varied than on any of the other Chess Box releases -- amplified Delta blues, big band, Mills Brothers-style harmony blues, jazz-influenced jump blues, and near-pop style R&B are all here; guitar pyrotechnics by Muddy Waters or Hubert Sumlin (on the Wolf's records), vocal acrobatics by Little Walter, and rippling performances by Koko Taylor illuminate this set throughout. While some of it, such as Muddy Waters' single of "Hoochie Coochie Man"; Little Walter's "My Babe"; Howlin' Wolf's performances of "Evil," "Spoonful," "Little Red Rooster," and "Back Door Man"; and Lowell Fulson's version of "Do Me Right" are easily available elsewhere, a lot else of what's here is genuinely rare and most enticing -- Dixon's own renditions of "Violent Love," "Crazy For My Baby," and "Pain In My Heart," in particular, are great records, lacking perhaps only a slight measure of the energy that a Muddy Waters brought to recording. Most of the set is concentrated on his blues work -- a pair of hot Bo Diddley sides ("Pretty Thing," "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover") that Dixon wrote are represented, but since he didn't write anything for Chuck Berry, that side of Dixon's history is left out, despite his having played bass on most of Berry's early recordings. Still, it's difficult to imagine anyone complaining over an "excuse" to bring some of the best sides of Muddy, Walter, the Wolf, Diddley, Taylor, Lowell Fulson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Sonny Boy Williamson, Otis Rush, and even Dixon's own '40s outfit, the Big Three together in one release. The sound is impeccable, holding up to standards even a dozen years later, and the set includes a well-illustrated and annotated booklet."
01 - Little Walter - My Babe.flac
02 - Big Three Trio - Violent Love.flac
03 - Eddie Boyd - Third Degree.flac
04 - Wille Mabon - Seventh Son.flac
05 - Willie Dixon - Crazy For My Baby.flac
06 - Willie Dixon - Pain In My Heart.flac
07 - Muddy Waters - (I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man.flac
08 - Howlin' Wolf - Evil.flac
09 - Little Walter - Mellow Down Easy.flac
10 - Jimmy Witherspoon - When The Lights Go Out.flac
11 - Muddy Waters - Young Fashioned Ways.flac
12 - Bo Diddley - Pretty Thing.flac
13 - Muddy Waters - I'm Ready.flac
14 - Lowell Fulson - Do Me Right.flac
15 - Muddy Waters - I Just Want To Make Love To You.flac
16 - Lowell Fulson - Tollin' Blues.flac
17 - Willie Dixon - 29 Ways.flac
18 - Willie Dixon - Walkin' The Blues.flac
19 - Howlin' Wolf - Spoonful.flac
20 - Otis Rush - You Know My Love.flac
21 - Bo Diddley - You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover.flac
22 - Howlin' Wolf - I Ain't Superstitious.flac
23 - Muddy Waters - You Need Love.flac
24 - Howlin' Wolf - Little Red Rooster.flac
25 - Howlin' Wolf - Back Door Man.flac
26 - Little Walter - Dead Presidents.flac
27 - Howlin' Wolf - Hidden Charms.flac
28 - Muddy Waters - You Shook Me.flac
29 - Sonny Boy Williamson - Bring It On Home.flac
30 - Howlin' Wolf - 300 Pounds Of Joy.flac
31 - Willie Dixon - Weak Brain, Narrow Mind.flac
32 - Koko Taylor - Wang Dang Doodle.flac
33 - Muddy Waters - The Same Thing.flac
34 - Howlin' Wolf - Built For Comfort.flac
35 - Little Milton - I Can't Quit You Baby.flac
36 - Koko Taylor - Insane Asylum.flac
LP > Rega P1 with Ortofon Super 30 > TC-750LC > E-Mu 0202 > Adobe Audition 3 (AA) @ 96kHz 32bit float > Manual click removal in AA > Click Repair set @ 10 > AA used to balance L/R, split tracks, fade in/out, and for manual click removal > RX Advanced to resample > RX Advanced to dither MBIT+ > TLH to FLAC and sector align (16bit, pad) > MP3 Tagger to edit tags.
"16bit" = 16bit at 44.1kHz
"24bit" = 24bit at 96kHz
No music was harmed in the making of this vinyl rip.
NEVER CO-SEED ANY OF MY TORRENTS WHERE-EVER YOU ARE