If compiler Neil Slaven was an axe hero, he says he would favour a Danelectro Guitarlin, with its longhorn body, its lipstick pickups and coke-bottle machine head. Perhaps he’d settle for the red Gretsch Duo-Jet Bo Diddley sported on his first album cover. That puts him out of step with most of the guitarists gathered on Deep Feeling. Albert King favoured the Flying V, Buddy Guy liked the metallic clatter of a Strat and Muddy Waters slashed his slide down a Telecaster neck. Semi-acoustics were the name of the game for the average blues guitarist. B.B. King and Little Milton took an early shine to the Gibson ES-335 (our cover star incidentally, in rare original “watermelon” cherry finish), although B’s Lucille was actually a slimline 355. Freddie King played a Les Paul until he changed permanently to a 335 and Otis Rush played his 335 upside-down and backwards.

Record producer and blues discographer/authority Neil Slaven has selected 75 masterpieces by 31 blues guitar heroes, spanning three decades, to provide a wide-ranging survey of the Post War blues that so enthralled a generation of guitarists in the Sixties and which continues to fascinate and inspire today’s purveyors of rock and blues. The guitarists showcased on Deep Feeling include legendary names like Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Elmore James, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, Albert King, Bo Diddley and Freddy King, alongside names that are less well known, but nevertheless revered by blues guitar cognoscenti, musicians like Guitar Slim, Robert Ward, Pee Wee Crayton, Pete “Guitar” Lewis, Earl King and Hop Wilson.

Whether a guitar and its amp came from an up-market music shop or Sears & Roebuck, it had to have impact. These men played in noisy venues, battling the howl of alcoholic exuberance. They had to capture their audiences’ attention and keep it. They reproduced that trenchant sound on the records they made. What may have sounded ragged then became the very essence of the music in later years. And that’s what we’re here to celebrate. Fantastic Voyage previously released the 3CD blues guitar anthology Screaming And Crying to critical acclaim and considerable sales. Since then we have released uniformly-packaged compilations devoted to blues harmonica (Just Wailing) and blues piano (Midnight Steppers). Now Deep Feeling returns to the mother lode for connoisseurs of blues guitar.