At the end of 2004, Lucy and I joined a local gym. My first time ever inside such a place. The bribe for joining was supposed to be some cosmetic 'products' (in His and Hers varieties), but they'd run out and gave us £30 HMV vouchers instead. Lucy wasn't impressed by the substitution, but I thought I'd probably get more value out of the vouchers than lots of sprays. Until I went to HMV, that is… Have you been to one of those places, recently? It was grim. A real struggle find a way to spend £30 there. I think I found a Small Faces compilation at a reasonably price, but such decent albums as there were seemed incredibly expensive. The only option was to rely on the old stuff that was all racked up with stickers: "£4.99 or 5 for £20". Even then I had to take one back because it had some of that horrible Digital Rights Management on it.
So this album was one of those stickered ones. Have a look at all the Muddy Waters compilations: Collection, Gold Collection, Essential Collection, The Best of Muddy Waters, Blue Skies - The Best Of, Masters of the Blues - The Best Of, His Best 1956 to 1964, The Anthology…
This particular one is well short of essential. What they don't tell you on the sleeve of course (or even in the liner notes) is that the versions of Mannish Boy and (I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man on this CD are not the canonical ones (as featured on Chess Pieces), but markedly inferior ones — probably recorded for a different label (Chess ripped off its artists and didn't inspire much loyalty) and licensed for dodgy compilations at knock-down prices. The same goes for I Just Want to Make Love to You, and Baby Please Don't Go is nothing like as good as Them's later version.
I've left the gym, and joined another one up the road at half the price.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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