Various Artists - Bandera Blues and Gospel (CD)

All Music Guide

Bandera was a small Chicago label launched by Vi Muszynski, and her son Bernie Harville, with money Muszynski made off one of her biggest discoveries, the Impressions. The label released a variety of music in the late '50s and early '60s, from hillbilly and rock, to blues and gospel. Bandera Blues and Gospel is the first volume in Ace Records' projected series of anthologies drawn from the Bandera vaults (White Bucks to Stetson Hats: Bandera Rockabilly is the second). Compiling 27 recordings made for Bandera and its Laredo and Jerico Road subsidiaries, Bandera Blues and Gospel offers a specialized look at a label that had no hits, and is largely unknown outside a small circle of collectors. The recordings are mastered from the original tapes, and the production values are fairly high; the artists, too, are competent ones Bandera hoped would compete nationally. Most of the material falls into the electric blues category; only about a third is gospel. Two of the blues artists, Jimmie Lee Robinson and Grover Pruitt, have a slight rockabilly orientation that recalls Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, and a couple of the gospel acts, too, have brisk, guitarbased styles similar to the early Staple Singers. Only Robinson went on to any greater fame (he was covered by John Mayall) the music is otherwise of regional or collectorinterest only.

- Greg Adams, All Music Guide