People write and ask me where to start. Here's my answer: twenty records, in roughly the order the music happened, from the Delta in the twenties to Chicago in the fifties and back down to the hills of Mississippi today. Most of them came out of my father's cabinet. A few I bought myself. A few at the end are here because Everett, my friend from the juke joint, told me I didn't know anything until I'd heard them, and he was right.

Almost all of these are on CD now, and a good record store can order the ones it doesn't have. Don't let anybody talk you out of the old scratchy ones. Your ears get used to the scratches in about three songs, and then you stop hearing them.

1. Charley Patton — Founder of the Delta Blues
   The rough, hoarse, stomping beginning of it all, from the man at Dockery. Give it time. It grows on you like the heat does.
2. Son House — Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions (1992)
   Recorded after he was found again, living in Rochester, New York, decades after his first records. Just his voice, his metal-bodied guitar and his foot, and it will pin you to your chair.
3. Robert Johnson — King of the Delta Blues Singers (1961)
   The LP that brought him back to the world, and the first one of his my father bought. Still the best place to start.
4. Robert Johnson — The Complete Recordings (1990)
   Everything he recorded in 1936 and 1937, twenty-nine songs plus the alternate takes, on two CDs. The whole legend fits on your bookshelf.
5. Skip James — Today! (1966)
   That high, lonesome voice and those strange tunings. Nobody else on earth sounds like Skip James. Play it late at night.
6. Mississippi John Hurt — Today! (1966)
   Not a Delta man exactly (he lived at Avalon, up where the hills begin), but the warmest, gentlest guitar playing you'll ever hear. My Sunday morning record.

7. Muddy Waters — The Complete Plantation Recordings (1993)
   The Library of Congress recordings made at Stovall in 1941 and 1942, with Muddy talking between songs. You can hear Chicago waiting in there.
8. Muddy Waters — The Best of Muddy Waters (1958)
   The electric Chicago singles that made his name. This is the sound coming out of our hi-fi every Saturday morning when I was a boy.
9. Howlin' Wolf — Moanin' in the Moonlight (1959)
   His first LP, gathering his early singles. That voice could take the paint off a car. He learned from Charley Patton at Dockery, and you can hear it.
10. Sonny Boy Williamson — Down and Out Blues (1959)
    The second Sonny Boy, Rice Miller, who played on the King Biscuit Time radio show out of Helena, Arkansas, right across the river from the Delta. Sly, funny, and the harmonica talks.
11. Little Walter — The Best of Little Walter (1958)
    He cupped a harmonica around a microphone and turned it into a horn section. Every harp player since owes him money.
12. Elmore James — The Sky Is Crying: The History of Elmore James (1993)
    The loudest, most electric slide guitar of the fifties, from a Mississippi man. Turn it up and open the windows.
13. Jimmy Reed — I'm Jimmy Reed (1958)
    Lazy, easy and impossible to sit still to. Born in the Delta, made his records in Chicago, and got played on every jukebox in between.
14. Willie Dixon — The Chess Box (1988)
    Mostly other people singing the songs he wrote. A lesson in how much of the Chicago sound came out of one big man from Vicksburg.

15. B.B. King — Live at the Regal (1965)
    Recorded at the Regal Theater on the South Side of Chicago. The best live blues record there is, and it's from my town, so I'm not neutral.
16. Albert King — Born Under a Bad Sign (1967)
    Born in Indianola, made this one at Stax in Memphis with the house band. Big, fat, bent guitar notes that hang in the air.
17. John Lee Hooker — The Healer (1989)
    A late-life comeback with a lot of famous friends sitting in. Hooker came from around Clarksdale, and that boogie never left him.

18. Mississippi Fred McDowell — I Do Not Play No Rock 'n' Roll (1969)
    Hill country slide guitar, and the best album title in my whole collection.
19. Junior Kimbrough — All Night Long (1992)
    The same few notes going around and around until you're hypnotized. Everett says this is what a Saturday night sounds like in the hills, and he'd know.
20. R.L. Burnside — Too Bad Jim (1994)
    Another hill country man, on the same little label out of Oxford, Mississippi. Rough as a gravel road and every bit as good.

That's twenty. I could have done a hundred. If you think I left out your favorite, you're probably right, and you can tell me so at [email protected].