Willie Mabon - I'm Mad: The Early Years Collection 1953-62 (2026)

Tracklist

CD1
01. It Keeps Raining
02. Bogey Man
03. Trouble In My Home
04. Times Are Getting Hard
05. Worry Blues
06. I Don't Know
07. I'm Mad
08. Night Latch
09. You're A Fool
10. Monday Woman
11. I Got To Go
12. Cruisin'
13. Would You, Baby
14. Late Again
15. Poison Ivy
16. Say Man
17. Come On Baby
18. Wow! I Feel So Good
19. Seventh Son
20. Lucinda
21. Knock On Wood

CD2
01. Got To Let You Go
02. I Gotta Go Now
03. Michell
04. I Don't Know (Version 2)
05. I Got To Have Her
06. Got To Have Some
07. Why Did It Happen To Me
08. Fannie Mae
09. Mean Mistreater
10. Early One Morning
11. Got To Have It
12. Beggar Or Bandit
13. Life Could Be Miserable
14. I'm Tired
15. Lonely Blues
16. Willie's Blues
17. He Lied
18. Someday You Gotta Pay
19. Why Did It Happen To Me (Version 2)
20. I'm Mad At You
21. I Love My Baby

Willie Mabon, born in Memphis, Tenn., in 1925, was a blues singer, pianist and songwriter, who was very much of the Chicago school of blues performers, and enjoyed a career peak with two US R&B No. 1s in 1953, although he never reached the long-term heights of some of his more renowned contemporaries, and eventually moved to Europe in the 1970s to become part of the thriving blues scene in France and the UK. This 42-track 2- CD collection comprises most of his releases during this era on the Apollo, Aristocrat, Parrot, Chess, Mad, Formal & Solar labels, plus other Chess recordings which were not released at the time. It features his two No. R&B hits, I Don't Know and I'm Mad and his 1955 R&B Top 10 hit Poison Ivy, along with other notable recordings including Willie Dixon's Seventh Son. As a city blues artist, his songwriting often had a wry, tongue-in-cheek approach to social commentary, and his music had an urbane and stylishly streetwise feel, which comes across through this trawl across the primary era of his career.