AAA 100% Analogue This LP was Remastered using Pure Analogue Components Only from the Master Tapes through to the Cutting Head

The 1958 masterwork album of Champion Jack Dupree's long and prolific career. Cut in New York (in stereo!) with a blasting band that included saxist Pete Brown and guitarist Larry Dale, the Jerry Wexler-produced Atlantic collection provides eloquent testimony to Dupree's eternal place in the New Orleans blues and barrelhouse firmament.

There's some decidedly down-in-the-alley subject matter -- "Can't Kick the Habit," "T.B. Blues," a revival of "Junker's Blues" -- along with the stomping "Nasty Boogie" and treatments of the ancient themes "Stack-O-Lee" and "Frankie & Johnny."

From my own viewpoint I can see that the Blues only really became mainstream in the late 1950's, and the album, Blues From The Gutter, is the perfect introduction, slow, moody and amazing piano playing. There is no confirmation of William Thomas Dupree's true date of birth, 1908, 1909 or 1910, however, he passed away on 21st January 1992 in Niedersachsen, Germany

. Dupree came from an intriguing background, his father was from the Belgian Congo, and his mother was part Native American, at the age of two, he was sent to the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, an orphanage, which was also the alma mater of Louis Armstrong. During his time in the home, he learned the piano, from his mentor Tuts Washington, who taught him how to play Junker's Blues ). His career was put on hold when he joined the U.S. Navy as a cook during the Second World War, he would go on to spend two years as a prisoner of war in Japanese camps.

In the 1960's he migrated to Europe, where he spent time in Switzerland, Denmark, England, Sweden and Germany (where he eventually died of cancer).  It really is an album that can be listened from start to finish as one.