I Got Blues for You: Review of Eagle Records’ Got Blues! (2003)

On January 7, 2004, eJazzNews published Keith “MuzikMan” Hannaleck’s review of a 15-track blues-rock sampler from Eagle Records under the headline “I Got Blues for You.” The disc itself is catalogued as Got Blues! (Eagle Records ER 20026-2, 2003); the review’s opening line, which says Eagle “has Got Blues for you,” plays on that title. Four of the artists on it, Gary Moore, Jack Bruce, Peter Green and John Mayall, have since died.

What the review said

Hannaleck gave the album five out of five and suggested it might be the best blues compilation of the year, pointing to the names on it: Jack Bruce, Paul Rodgers, Tab Benoit, Peter Green, John Mayall and George Thorogood. His favorite was “Custard Pie (Revisited),” a slide-guitar reworking that sent him back to Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti. He also singled out “Fistful of Dirt,” John Mayall’s “Kids Got the Blues,” which he heard as Mayall’s salute to young blues players, and the closing bonus track, Fleetwood Mac’s “Got to Move.” He called the set an upbeat blues-rock party and said every track had its moments.

Two credits in the review need correcting. In the text Hannaleck attributed “Fistful of Dirt” to Luther Allison, but the track is by Luther’s son, guitarist Bernard Allison, as both the review’s own track list and the Discogs catalogue entry show. “Custard Pie (Revisited)” is credited on the disc to Matt Tutor, Eric Gales and Derek Trucks, not only to Tutor and Trucks. The review’s sign-off date also reads January 6, 2003, a year before it was posted.

What was on the disc

Got Blues! worked as a sampler of the blues artists Eagle was releasing in the early 2000s. It opened with John Hammond’s “The Same Thing,” followed by Robben Ford, Shemekia Copeland (“Walk On”) and John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Some tracks came straight from recent Eagle albums: “Ride Till I Die” is the title song of George Thorogood and the Destroyers’ 2003 album, and “Cool Down” comes from the Peter Green Splinter Group’s 2003 album Reaching the Cold 100. The rest of the program featured Joe Bonamassa (“So It’s Like That”), Coco Montoya (“Can’t Look Back”), Tab Benoit with Jimmy Thackery (“Strange Things Happen”), Jack Bruce with Gary Moore (“I’m in the Mood”) and Paul Rodgers, the former Free and Bad Company singer, with “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” Scott Holt’s “I Don’t Know” was listed as previously unreleased.

The song behind the album’s highlight is older. “Custard Pie” opens Led Zeppelin’s 1975 double album Physical Graffiti; the version here recasts it as a slide-guitar blues.

What happened next

Gary Moore, who had joined Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker in the 1990s trio BBM, died in February 2011 at 58. Jack Bruce, best remembered as the bassist and singer of Cream, died on October 25, 2014, at 71. Peter Green, a founder of Fleetwood Mac, led the Splinter Group through eight albums between 1997 and 2003 and died in July 2020 at 73. John Mayall, whose Bluesbreakers Green had played in before founding Fleetwood Mac, died on July 22, 2024, at 90.

The original eJazzNews covered blues alongside jazz; for the jazz side of the guitar story, see our guide to jazz guitarists.

Sources

• Discogs, “Various: Got Blues!,” Eagle Records ER 20026-2, 2003.
• Discogs, “George Thorogood and the Destroyers: Ride ‘Til I Die,” 2003.
• Discogs, “Peter Green Splinter Group: Reaching the Cold 100,” 2003.
• Discogs, “Led Zeppelin: Physical Graffiti,” 1975.
• “Gary Moore Obituary,” The Guardian, February 7, 2011.
• “Jack Bruce Obituary,” The Guardian, October 26, 2014.
• “Peter Green Obituary,” The Guardian, July 26, 2020.
• John Mayall, “Official website.”
• Wikipedia, “Bernard Allison.”

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here. You can read the original as it appeared on eJazzNews via the Internet Archive.
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