Sam Collins

Belonging to an initial wave of blues artists, Collins honed his approach in the southern regions of Mississippi rather than the Delta area. The first record he released, a single titled "The Jail House Blues" from 1927, came before the debuts of notable figures like Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson from the same state, and it was promoted under the billing "Crying Sam Collins and his Git-Fiddle." Although Collins never achieved widespread recognition in the blues scene, with subsequent releases issued via multiple aliases including Jim Foster in particular, his country-style bottleneck guitar recordings ranked among the earliest selections for LP reissues as the revival of country blues began to take shape. In The Bluesmen, Sam Charters observed: "Although Collins was not one of the stylistic innovators within the Mississippi blues idiom, he was enough part of it that, in blues like 'Signifying Blues' and 'Slow Mama Slow,' he had some of the intensity of the Mississippi music at its most creative level." ~ Jim O'Neal