This is the CD accompaniment/compliment to the Martin Scorsese-produced, Marc Levin-directed PBS documentary of the same name - if this film (due to be broadcast later this month) is only ¼ as good as this disc, it ought to be Emmy-bait for sure. The locus of this compilation is the Chicago blues - the raw, electric, amplified variety of the blues that were the spiritual if not literal godfather to the feral, oft-despised thing that came to be known as rock & roll, along with some of the "godchildren" - those seers, sages and upstarts that took inspiration from those blues and transmuted them. The Gods of the Windy City are here: Muddy, the Wolf, Koko Taylor, Little Walter, performing their signature tunes, and no matter how many times one hears them - in later renditions or as covers by other performers - they still possess a stark, epochal, time-and-place dynamism that has no equal in American Music. The "sons" include Bob Dylan (whose "Maggie’s Farm" takes the Chicago sound into Surreal-ville), Paul Butterfield (one of the first - if not the first - white American performer to meet the Chicago sound on its own terms), hip-hop icons Public Enemy and Etta James, whose "I’d Rather Go Blind" shows what an influence she was on Janis Joplin. The only caveat I’ve is I’d’ve like to have seen the inclusion of some of the UK "sons," like Fleetwood Mac (who, in their original incarnation w/ Peter Green, recorded some dandy blues music, even recording w/ some Chicago cats like Otis Spann, Muddy’s pianist), John Mayall and Eric Clapton - but I guess ya can’t have everything. But what one does get is a killer primer of the Chicago sound and what That Sound Hath Wrought. No hep home should be w/out this.