Lonnie Donegan ‎- Lonnie + Showcase (Remastered) (2017)

1958 Album 'Lonnie' + 1956 album 'Showcase' both 24 bit digitally remastered + 5 bonus tracks 'Puttin' On The Style', 'Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O', 'Midnight Special', 'The House Of The Rising Sun' and 'The Gold Rush Is Over'.

The first great blues album to come out of England. Donegan's debut album is absolutely first-rate acoustic folk-blues, featuring some of the songs he'd been playing for close to 10 years, including "Frankie And Johnny," and stuff he learned off of Leadbelly records like "I'm Alabammy Bound," among other folk and blues standards. The sound is raw and crisp, featuring Denny Wright's crisp lead guitar licks behind Donegan's emphatic strumming and superb vocals. He didn't have Elvis' rich baritone, but he could wail the blues better than anyone in England at the time (including Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies), and he knew how to make the tension in a song rise across five minutes like no one else around. Leroy Carr's "How Long How Long Blues" gets a good workout, but the highlight of this forgotten jewel of an album is Donegan's moody rendition of "I'm A Ramblin' Man," a dark blues standard that shows off the guitar interplay between Donegan and Wright to great effect and features what may be Donegan's best blues vocal ever. Leadbelly's "I'm Alabammy Bound" gives Donegan and Wright a chance to share vocals, to great effect (Wright had this coarse bass/baritone that went well with Donegan's blues tenor). Note: The contents of Showcase are available on Bear Family's 8-CD set More Than "Pye In The Sky." –Bruce Eder, AllMusicGuide

Donegan's second album, recorded in March of 1958, shows some greater sophistication. In place of sheer volume on the singing, he uses more subtle inflections throughout this mix of blues, gospel, and folk, which includes covers of traditional gospel songs like "Ain't You Glad You Got Religion" and two Lee Hayes songs ("Lonesome Traveller," "Times Are Getting Hard Boys"), Blind Willie Johnson's "Light From The Lighthouse," and Lonnie Johnson's "I've Got Rocks In My Bed" (which is good, but exists in an even better outtake issued by Bear Family in 1993). Jimmy Currie had taken over on lead guitar by this time, and proved more flexible than Denny Wright, with more complex lead guitar passages, although Wright evidently could play harder when the need arose, but otherwise the band is unchanged. Not as strong as the first album, with more of a folk music orientation, but not bad either. Note: The material from Lonnie is available on Bear Family's 8-CD collection More Than "Pye In The Sky." –Bruce Eder, AllMusicGuide

Tracklist
1. Sally Don't You Grieve (02:12)
2. Whoa Back (02:09)
3. Lonesome Traveller (02:52)
4. The Dunshine Of His Love (01:51)
5. Ain't No More Cane On The Brazos (04:02)
6. Ain't You Glad You've Got Religion (02:28)
7. Grand Coulee Dam (02:38)
8. Time's A Gettin' Hard Boys (02:44)
9. Lazy John (02:28)
10. Light From The Lighthouse (02:16)
11. I've Got Rocks In My Bed (05:28)
12. Long Summer Day (04:22)
13. Wabash Cannonball (01:58)
14. How Long, How Long Blues (02:35)
15. Nobody's Child (04:57)
16. I Shall Not Be Moved (02:23)
17. I'm Alabammy Bound (01:51)
18. I'm A Ramblin' Man (04:55)
19. Wreck Of The Old '97 (02:29)
20. Frankie And Johnny (05:23)
21. Puttin' On The Style (Live) (03:36)
22. Ron't You Rock Me Daddy-O (01:42)
23. Midnight Special (02:14)
24. The House On The Rising Sun (03:57)
25. The Gold Rush Is Over (02:39)