The Best of Little Walter

1958 greatest hits album by Little Walter

Greatest hits album by

Little Walter

Released

1958

Recorded

May 12, 1952 – January 25, 1955 in Chicago, Illinois^[1]^[2]

Genre

Chicago blues

Length

35:44

Label

Checker LP 1428^[3]

Producer

Leonard Chess, Phil Chess, Willie Dixon

Little Walter chronology

The Best of Little Walter
(1958)

Hate to See You Go
(1969)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	^[4]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music	^[5]
Record Mirror	^[6]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	^[7]

The Best of Little Walter is the first LP record by American blues performer Little Walter.^[5] First released in 1958, the compilation album contains ten Little Walter songs that appeared in the Top 10 of the Billboard R&B chart from 1952 to 1955,^[8] plus two B-sides. The album was first released by Checker Records as LP-1428, which was the first LP record released by Checker, and then released on Chess Records with the same catalog number.^[3]

The album has been reissued numerous times, although it has been largely superseded by the twenty-song collection Little Walter His Best: Chess 50th Anniversary Collection.

Artwork and packaging

The album cover features a black-and-white photo portrait shot by Grammy award winning photographer Don Bronstein of Little Walter holding/playing a Hohner 64 Chromatic harmonica and liner notes by Studs Terkel, who had written Giants of Jazz. The original LP featured a black label.

Accolades

In 1991, The Best of Little Walter was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in the "Classics of Blues Recordings – Album" category.^[3] In 2003, the album was ranked #198 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".^[9]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Walter Jacobs (Little Walter), except where noted

Side one
No.	Title	Length
1.	"My Babe" (Willie Dixon)	2:44
2.	"Sad Hours"	3:15
3.	"You're So Fine"	3:07
4.	"Last Night"	2:46
5.	"Blues with a Feeling" (Rabon Tarrant, re-written by Jacobs)	3:10
6.	"Can't Hold Out Much Longer"	3:03

Side two
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Juke"	2:47
2.	"Mean Old World" (T-Bone Walker, re-written by Jacobs)	2:57
3.	"Off the Wall"	2:52
4.	"You Better Watch Yourself"	3:04
5.	"Blue Light"	3:14
6.	"Tell Me Mamma"	2:47

Personnel

The following people contributed to the Best of Little Walter:^[1]^[2]

Little Walter – lead vocals, harmonica
Muddy Waters – guitar on "Juke" and "Can't Hold Out Much Longer"
Jimmy Rogers – guitar on "Juke" and "Can't Hold Out Much Longer"
David Myers – guitar
Louis Myers – guitar
Leonard Caston – guitar on "My Babe"
Robert Lockwood Jr. – guitar on "My Babe"
Willie Dixon – bass, producer
Elgin Evans – drums on "Juke" and "Can't Hold Out Much Longer"
Fred Below – drums
Studs Terkel – sleeve notes

Singles chart

The songs "Juke" and "My Babe" peaked at #1 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart. "Sad Hours", "You're So Fine", and "Blues with a Feeling" made it to #2 on the same chart. "Last Night" and "Mean Old World" peaked at #6, "Off the Wall" and "You Better Watch Yourself" reached #8, and "Tell Me Mama" made it to #10.^[8]

Release history

Region	Date	Label	Format	Catalog
United States	1958	Checker/Chess Records	LP	1428
United States	1967	Checker Records	LP	3004
United States	1988	MCA Records/Chess Records	LP	CH-9192
			Cassette	CHC-9192
			CD	CHD-9192

References

^ ^a ^b George R. White; Robert L. Campbell; Tom Kelly. "The Chess Label Part I (1950–1952)". Robert Campbell. Clemson, South Carolina: Clemson University. Retrieved March 9, 2011.
^ ^a ^b George R. White; Robert L. Campbell; Tom Kelly. "The Chess Label Part II (1953–1955)". Robert Campbell. Clemson, South Carolina: Clemson University. Retrieved March 9, 2011.
^ ^a ^b ^c Past Hall of Fame Inductees Archived 2012-07-17 at the Wayback Machine. Blues Foundation. Go under 1991 Hall of Fame Inductees and click on The Best of Little Walter--Little Walter (Checker, 1958) to view the album review.
^ AllMusic
^ ^a ^b Larkin, Colin (2006). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Vol. 5. MUZE. pp. 273–274.
^ Jopling, Norman (10 October 1964). "Little Walter: The Best Of Little Watler" (PDF). Record Mirror. No. 187. p. 12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 April 2022. Retrieved 16 August 2022.
^ The Rolling Stone Album Guide. Random House. 1992. pp. 354–355.
^ ^a ^b Whiburn, Joel (1988). Top R&B Singles 1942-1988. Record Research. p. 613. ISBN 0-89820-068-7.
^ "#198 The Best of Little Walter". Rolling Stone. 2003. Archived from the original on June 12, 2010. Retrieved September 20, 2010.