Eddie Bo

Eddie Bo’s work is well represented amongst many of the early beats of hip-hop. Both "Check Your Bucket” or "Hook And Sling” have been, or should be, in any hip-hop DJ’s collection since the ’70s. Yet Bo remains under-anthologised despite his significance. That’s what makes this collection so welcome — it fills in many of the holes of the shredded Bo-ography. As always, when New Orleans is the subject, colourful stories emerge about the music scene back in the day, warts and all. But over the course of 27 selections we hear his style progress from jangly rockabilly to syncopated soul and finally, hard-as-diamonds, sample-worthy funk. Even serious crate-diggers will find a few new gems here and, as they say in those Time Life commercials, you could spend hundreds of dollars assembling all the tracks on this album, or you could just pick this up.