Named a "Top Ten Vinyl Reissues of 2016" by The Absolute Sound!

 

"Analogue Productions' recently launched Quality Record Pressings Facility, mastered by Bernie Grundman, in a beautiful gatefold jacket with extra sessions shots? It's been ages since I've heard LP surfaces this quiet — as in dead quiet. The expense and effort that Chad Kassem and company put into this venture are immediately obvious. ... Making music together bring this recording to life as never before. It's by far the best sounding and most engaging version yet... analog lovers will be in hog heaven." — Wayne Garcia, The Absolute Sound,

 

 

With outstanding support from Buddy Guy on second guitar, Otis Spann on piano, Willie Dixon at the upright bass, and contributions from drummer Clifton James, its reputation is not surprising, and the fact that Folk Singer stands as Waters' only acoustic album just adds to its significance in the blues canon.

 

Greatest Blues Albums of All Time, Folk Singer is not just a great blues album but an audiophile standard, arguably the only "classic" blues record to achieve such a prestigious standing.

 

Mastered from the original master tapes and pressed on  200 LP, this Chicago blues affair has never been better in any incarnation. Whether or not you already own this in a previous edition, consider Analogue Productions' new reissue an absolute must.

 

Instead of re-issuing this yet again, some folks argue that Analogue Productions should reissue newer albums. They are tired of hearing again what they already have. What they forget is that the last reissue of this classic was many years ago. Sorry, but time flies, especially as you get older. And guess what else? That issue by Classic Records is long out of print as is the one Mobile Fidelity first issued around twenty years ago when the label decided to re-enter the vinyl market and press its own records in Sebastopol.

 

Muddy's "unplugged" album was cut in September of 1963 and still sounds fresh and vital today. It was Muddy simply returning to his original style on a plain acoustic guitar in a well-tuned room with Willie Dixon on string bass, Clifton James on drums, and Buddy Guy on second acoustic guitar. The nine tracks are divvied up between full rhythm section treatments with Buddy and Muddy as a duo and the final track, "Feel Like Going Home," which Waters approaches solo

 

So for a new generation of vinyl fanatics, here's Muddy Waters Folk Singer 

The amount of inner detail released is simply astonishing.

 

There are technical reasons for all of this having to do with how Quality Record Pressings was designed and built and how the presses were modified.

 

Yet at the same time, the sound is sweet, liquid and free of harshness and edge.

The dynamics are mind-boggling

 

"Worried that the folk-music fad was luring listeners away from the blues, Chess Records directed Waters to record with acoustic instruments. These sessions — by Waters, Willie Dixon and a young Buddy Guy — went astonishingly well, and this pioneering "unplugged" set is beloved by blues and folk fans alike." - www.rollingstone.com

"The Quality Record Pressing is drop-dead quiet-as silent as the best Japanese pressings from the late 1970s-and the amount of inner detail released is simply astonishing...the sound is sweet, liquid and free of harshness and edge. The dynamics are mind-boggling. When Muddy takes it up ten notches to emphasize a point it's positively explosive in a way the 33 1/3 version only suggests." Music = 9/10, Sound = 10/10! — Michael Fremer, .

"Analogue Productions' recently launched Quality Record Pressings Facility, mastered by Bernie Grundman, in a beautiful gatefold jacket with extra sessions shots? It's been ages since I've heard LP surfaces this quiet — as in dead quiet. The expense and effort that Chad Kassem and company put into this venture are immediately obvious. ... Making music together bring this recording to life as never before. It's by far the best sounding and most engaging version yet... analog lovers will be in hog heaven." — Wayne Garcia, The Absolute Sound,

Musicians:
Muddy Waters, vocals, guitar
Buddy Guy, guitar
Willie Dixon, bass
Clifton James, drums

Recorded At – Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Recorded in Englewood Cliffs, NJ; June 4, 1963.