I Was Walking Through The Woods

This 1970 compilation gathers tracks Buddy Guy — a highly emotional singer and an absolutely stunning guitarist — recorded for Chess between 1960 and 1964. Some, like “Let Me Love You Baby” and the opening “Watch Yourself,” feel like he’s trying unsuccessfully to become a soul artist in pursuit of a hit, but the more stark material like “Stone Crazy,” “I Got a Strange Feeling” (which he’d later re-record as “When My Left Eye Jumps”), “My Time After Awhile,” “Ten Years Ago” and “First Time I Met the Blues” are astonishing. “First Time…” contains the lyric that gives the album its title, and it’s an absolute nightmare of a song, Guy talking about the blues as a malevolent monster chasing him through the woods — “blues, you ran me from tree to tree…blues, don’t murder me.” “Stone Crazy” and “…Strange Feeling” are equally overwrought, with Guy’s voice cracking into a desperate howl of pain before his guitar explodes in a style like a cross between B.B. King and James “Blood” Ulmer or even Sonny Sharrock.