King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. II

Music

The album compiles sixteen recordings, ten of which were previously available as 78s on the Vocalion label, originally recorded during five sessions in 1936 and 1937. Through the course of the 1960s, blues music had become more visible in the popular music landscape of the day. Songs from Johnson's first album had been covered by popular rock artists in the late sixties, including Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin, who based their "Lemon Song" partly on "Traveling Riverside Blues." The Rolling Stones placed a version of "Love In Vain" on their 1969 landmark Let It Bleed before it had been released on LP, having heard the song on a bootleg recording circulating at the time.

Columbia decided it was time to issue another Johnson album, scoured the vaults again and came up with nine additional Vocalion masters, four unreleased alternate takes and one unreleased track. Likely finding no further acceptable recordings, to bring the number of tracks to the same sixteen as on Volume I, the alternate of "Ramblin' On My Mind" and masters of "Kind Hearted Woman Blues" and "Preachin' Blues" from the earlier LP were issued again. Although not quite as popular or influential as its predecessor, it includes recordings of two Johnson songs that have become blues standards, "Sweet Home Chicago" and "Love in Vain." In contrast to the deeply emotive songs released on the 1961 album, many of the tracks on Volume II display Johnson's lighter side.

King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. II was reissued on August 10, 2004 by the Legacy Records subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment, with the master version of "Ramblin' On My Mind" appended as a bonus track. The original recording engineer was Vincent Liebler.