If you’ve spent summer 2025 sticking to leather car seats, chugging lukewarm iced coffee, and swearing at the sun like it’s a personal enemy, you’re not alone. The heat has been relentless—record-breaking, soul-melting, and just plain miserable. And while most of us are begging for a breeze or a blackout, Craft Recordings and Bluesville Records have taken a different approach: crank the damn thermostat even higher.
On August 1st, they’re back with two more killer reissues on 180-gram vinyl—At the Gate of Horn by Memphis Slim and Back on My Feet Again by the legendary Furry Lewis. These aren’t casual background spins. They’re raw, sweaty, and full of life—blues LPs that sound like they were pulled out of a juke joint that never had air conditioning to begin with.
This Craft x Bluesville collaboration has been one of the most consistent and exciting reissue runs of the year. No gimmicks, no gatefold fluff—just clean, honest, AAA-pressed blues records that hit hard and don’t cost you your electricity bill. From Mississippi John Hurt and Lonnie Johnson with Elmer Snowden to the recent gut-punch that was This Is Buddy Guy! and the long-overdue Mr. Scrapper’s Blues, every title in this series has delivered. No duds, no throwaways—just pure heat, release after release.
And with Sinners burning up the silver screen and delivering one of the biggest box office hits in recent memory, reminding people that the devil still prefers the Delta, this series couldn’t have better timing. The world’s rediscovering the blues—sweaty, supernatural, and unfiltered. And Furry Lewis? He’s right in the middle of it, standing barefoot on hot pavement, guitar in hand, daring you to say the blues is dead. These records aren’t just keeping it alive—they’re setting it on fire.
Walter E. “Furry” Lewis was a Memphis-born country blues guitarist and songwriter who got his start in the late 1920s and kept the flame burning well into the 1970s. Born somewhere between 1893 and 1899—because let’s be honest, birth certificates back then were more rumor than record—Lewis made his first recordings in Chicago in 1927 for Vocalion Records. A year later, he was back in Memphis cutting sides with the Memphis Jug Band and rubbing shoulders with local blues royalty.
Furry’s sound was a gritty blend of fingerpicking and slide guitar, steeped in Delta blues tradition with a country soul twist. He notched early hits like “Kassie Jones” and “Judge Harsh Blues” before fading from the spotlight. But the 1960s folk blues revival pulled him back in. He dusted off his guitar, laid down new sessions at Memphis’s Sun Studio for Prestige/Bluesville, and found himself in front of a whole new audience—longhairs, college kids, and anyone with a taste for the real stuff.
Furry Lewis Back on My Feet Again 180G LP — Bluesville Series Vinyl Reissue
Back On My Feet Again captures that return to form in 1961—a moment when the blues were straddling the past and future. Originally released on Prestige Records, the album showcases Lewis’ signature fingerstyle and bottleneck slide work on tracks like “John Henry” and “Big Chief Blues,” plus traditional cuts and fresh originals. This reissue, pressed on 180-gram vinyl at QRP with a faithful tip-on jacket via Craft Recordings and Bluesville, nails the spirit of the original without dressing it up. No frills, no polish—just raw, ragged Memphis blues from a man who lived it.
As someone who owns vinyl copies of Back On My Feet Again (Prestige), All Kinds of Blues, and the Fat Possum reissue of Worried Blues, I’d rank this new pressing above my original Back On My Feet Again and All Kinds of Blues in terms of overall sonics—but it still sits just behind the Worried Blues Fat Possum reissue. This new cut is impressively clean, with zero surface noise, but Lewis feels slightly recessed in the soundstage—like he’s playing from the far end of the bar rather than right in front of you. And then it shifts. Like her legs.
The soundstage and presentation on this new pressing varies from track to track. On “Big Chief Blues,” it’s like Furry pulls his chair a little closer—close enough to size up you and the woman sitting next to you, the one with the legs that go on longer than your last job interview. She seems a lot more interested in his guitar than your rambling story about working security off Beale. Furry knows it too. You can hear it in the way he leans into the slide—confident, a little cocky, like he’s already halfway through mentally undressing your date between verses.
Then there’s the title track, “Back On My Feet Again,” where he suddenly sounds like he’s backed off—just enough to notice when you shift your jacket and reveal the blued .357 tucked in your shoulder holster. Memphis isn’t for amateurs, and neither is this record. The soundstage isn’t especially wide, but it’s focused—like a smoke-filled juke joint lit by one flickering neon sign, where the eyes never leave you until the last note dies out.
How this reissue stacks up against the original 1961 Prestige mono pressing with the deep grooves? We’ll never really know. Dropping $150 on a clean copy just to compare isn’t in the cards—not unless you strike gold or sell off that last decent tonearm you’ve got in the rotation.
Same odds as her going home with you at the end of the night. Let’s face it—you never had a chance. Not with Furry in the room.
Where to buy:
Related Reading:
- Review: Memphis Slim – At The Gate Of Horn 180G LP Reissue By Craft Recordings Revives Bluesville Classic
- Bluesville Records And Craft Recordings Reissue Classic LPs By Memphis Slim & Furry Lewis
- Review: Lonnie Johnson’s Blues & Ballads Reissue From Bluesville & Craft — Classic Blues, Audiophile Vinyl, No Frills, All Soul
- Mississippi John Hurt Today! Vinyl Reissue Review
Anton
August 2, 2025 at 1:15 am
Wonderful imagery in the last few paragraphs. I may buy this record for that reason alone.
“Sinners” was really good. Craft seems to be reading the tea leaves in regard to pricing.