King of The Delta Blues Singers - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

The album was originally released by Columbia Records in 1961 as a mono LP. At the time of its release very little scholarship had been done on Johnson's life, and the album liner notes contain some inaccuracies and false conclusions, and a speculative portrait of Johnson's personality. As the two surviving portraits of him were discovered a decade later, the cover painting depicts a faceless musician in field clothes. The album was followed in 1970 by King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. 2, including the remaining recordings at that time available by Johnson not on this record. King of the Delta Blues Singers was reissued on September 15, 1998 by the Legacy Records subsidiary label of the Sony Corporation, with a newly discovered alternate version of "Traveling Riverside Blues" appended as a bonus track. The original recording engineer was Vincent Liebler.

The Los Angeles Times wrote that Johnson's recordings for the albums "revolutionized the Mississippi Delta style that became the foundation of the Chicago blues sound". The Wall Street Journal wrote that "when his album King of the Delta Blues Singers made its belated way to England in the mid-1960s, it energized a generation of musicians". English rock musician Eric Clapton cited King of the Delta Blues Singers, along with its second volume, as an early inspiration on his recording career. In 1980, King of the Delta Blues Singers became the first album to be inducted by the Blues Foundation into the Blues Hall of Fame. The Hartford Courant selected King of the Delta Blues Singers for its list of the 25 Pivotal Recordings That Defined Our Times (1999). In 2003, the album was ranked number 27 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Mojo magazine ranked it number 6 on its list of 100 Records That Changed the World (2007).