Talk:Series/Orbis/Blues Collection

Have just made an addition (Blues at Xmas 2) to the end of the list - but before I registered. I have now registered as I have noticed that there are some more major additions necessary so I guess there may be future correspondence necessary. As noted on my (pre-registration) editing notes, I'm a complete beginner at wiki.

As a first step I'm outlining some of the omissions as I see them.

1. There is a whole extra CD in some version of the series; this appears as either #3 or #9: Ike & Tina Turner - The Queen of Rhythm'n'Blues.

2. There are 2 other numbering series that I am aware of: BLU CC 001 etc and BLU C 001 etc. The title (ie artist)/ref (catalogue) number relationships are different again from the variations in your table (and different from each other).

3. The second of these seems to have been used for the casette issues (check needed on this) but in addition some CDs were issued in this series (ie BLU C 001 onwards). I have copies of these in cardboard folders (as opposed to jewel cases). A seller on eBay told me that he bought them in a newsagent in Swansea (UK).

4. I have not found anything beyond #15 in either of the above 2 extra series.

5. The collection was apparently issued in Australia - this may account for one of these extra series.

6. I am currently trying to find the time to put the details of the variants that I have collected onto a spreadsheet, so if you can bear with me, I can send you a copy which should then give full details of these 2 additional numbering sequences.

7. Not really within the ambit of your article(?) - but there are a couple of fairly well-known mislabelled items: the CD labelled as #83 Jimmy Johnson is sometimes in fact #57 (Eddie Vinson). Same applies to #54 Jimmy Rogers which is also sometimes Eddie Vinson.

Couple of other small points of possible interest: what happened to #91 and 92? Guess Orbis just pulled the plug prematurely. In any event the series seems to have been a fairly ad hoc bit of organisation - I've got a printed list of titles (?from about 1996 or 7) which lists JL Hooker twice (also in as #76) and also in the late numbers lists several artists who never appeared at all like The Animals, Canned Heat, Katie Webster.

BTW Thanks for your sterling efforts so far. Wish I'd found it b4 I started my spreadsheet! Chris

More on the German numbering & other minor changes

I have made 2 alterations on the German numbers. I have now obtained CDs/magazines of some of the German issues and the copy of the Roosevelt Sykes one is numbered GNC 030. I have therefore changed the entry for him. I have also put a question mark after the entry for Leadbelly which is #30 in the current German column. I haven't actually deleted this GNC 030 number as it is quite conceivable (given all the other inconsistencies) that 2 different artists were released with the same number. I've also changed the introductory text to reflect the second Xmas album (a point I missed before when adding it to the main columnar listing). Lastly on these Xmas issues I see that the numbers have been changed from NCC 93/94 to 093 and 094. The physical copies in my possession do not have this leading zero (ie NCC 93 and NCC 94). I haven't changed them as maybe the leading zero reflects some arcane cataloguing convention (I wouldn't know - I'm a blues fan, not an archivist - but we blues fans naturally expect to be told it like it is, so the zero-less number would seem to be more appropriate!)

I've been away for a while and have just jumped into this can of worms again. Just located this page which has many additions to the D'Agostini series. Furthermore I also located two releases in the UK dating back to 1992. These had catalogue numbers BLU C 001 & BLU C 002. The first, John Lee Hooker, Boogie Man had a very different track listing than BLU NC 001, and the second is a Muddy Waters compilation. This leads me believe that the 1992 series was aborted. Just guessing, but the catalogue number prefixes seem to suggest that 'BLU C' means 'Blues Collection', 'BLU NC' means 'Blues New Collection' and 'BLU GNC' means 'Blues German New Collection'. Pure speculation, but it works for me :) There is also evidence to suggest that some releases were made in Germany with the 'BLU NC' prefix. I won't even begin to look at the French series on the Charly label.

Tim Hosking/Munger