Joe Carter & His Chicago Broomdusters - Mean & Evil Blues (Japan Reissue) (1997)

Joe Carter's only album, recorded on the tiny Barrelhouse label, remains to this day one of the great lost blues albums of the '70s, if not the top one. On the surface, its content was as close to the standard blues album of the decade as you'd expect; a mix of two guitars, drums, and no bass, Chicago-style production that drew heavily from the repertoire of Muddy Waters and Elmore James, with no modern embellishments, recorded in a studio environment that can best be described as rough. But the intensity and emotional commitment emanates from Carter like laser beams on every track. With a guitar tone on his massive Epiphone that cuts like a knife, coupled with a voice that oscillates between stolid, thunderous, and utterly agonized (the second verse of "Treat Me the Way You Do"), Carter creates a mood so dense with atmosphere that the listener is immediately immersed from start to finish. As real as any Hound Dog Taylor album on Alligator from this period, minus the good vibes, this is eerie, nocturnal music of the highest order. The album was released on CD only in Japan, and its absence was one of the great tragedies in the reissue field, given the dearth of lesser albums from this period that are reissued. Needless to say, its appearance in any form is a worthy addition to any blues collection.