A rather strange collection of
Charles Brown's earliest recordings,
Bobby Sox Blues is one of a flood of releases since 1999 that have attempted to anthologize the singer, although this market is full of similar budget-line reissues, many far more successful than this one. With rather bare liner notes and minimal track details, it's somewhat hard to place these recordings -- they're clearly from
Brown's time with
Johnny Moore -- although the rather scattershot way in which they're presented only serves to add to the confusion. Some of the music on
Bobby Sox Blues is great, but there's really no real reason for anyone to select this release over the far better-sounding and annotated releases that are available.