'Tampa Red (1935-42)'

This album brings back some crazy memories, I can clearly remember buying this album, it was in July 1987 at a record store in Amsterdam. I was attending a symposium on quantitative research, where I delivered a presentation on Itô calculus.  My husband Jerry, tagged along, so that when the symposium concluded, we could stay for an extra few days, and check out Amsterdam together.



On a beautiful sunny Sunday, Jerry and I walked around Amsterdam looking at the architecture, the canals and along the way visited the coffee shops, to check out the various types of weed and hash available.  The quality of the weed in Amsterdam was about the same as it was in New York, but in New York you hardly ever saw much hash, so hash had a novelty value to it.

In one coffee shop, we bought a few grams of amazingly strong Nepalese Temple Ball hash, and the guy behind the counter in a hushed voice asked if we wanted some "philosopher's stones" (it may have had something to do with my dancing bears t-shirt).  He gave us what was deemed two doses, which we ate, and went on our merry way.



"Philosopher's stones" aka "magic truffles" are not truffles (or stones), but rather a mycelium, that grows underground, and are chockful of psilocybin goodness.

The philosopher's stones kicked in, we smoked some temple balls, and stumbled across a record shop.  When we first walked into the tiny, narrow and cramped store, it had that certain smell you only get in used record and book stores (Ooh, that smell!).  The place was filled to the rafters with records, which the psilocybin heightened and distorted.  Just as I started feeling a little claustrophobic and felt like leaving, I heard:


"So now we got something new
it’s a dance anyone can do
grandmama and grandpa too
stop truckin' and Suzi-Q"

Jerry and I looked at each other and in unison, said, "Tamp Red!", and we shuffled around to the beat which caused us to go into hysterics.  The owner of the record store thought it was pretty funny too, and when he stopped laughing, he told us we were listening to a new release from a Dutch label, and showed us the LP's jacket.

'Tampa Red 1935-1942' was released in 1987 on the Old Tramp label, out of The Netherlands (not to be confused with the German label, Tramp Records).

This is a fun collection of blues and hokum (with double entendres out the "wazoo").  Tampa Red, is backed by the usual suspects: Clifford "Snags" Jones, Big Maceo, The Chicago Five, Blind John Davis, Black Bob and others.

The liner notes proclaim: "16 of these titles have never appeared on LP before!", but I was never, and still aren't sure how true, that was.

The physical album itself is quite impressive, with a laminated cover, and high quality vinyl, my guess is, it's 180gm, on virgin vinyl.  Also, all things considered (for recordings made between 1935 and 1942) has excellent sonics.  The freeload is a 24bit/48kHz rip

For the freeload, what are some of your favorite compilation albums by an artist/group, or various artists?