Craft Recordings’ Bluesville series continues to make the case that blues deserves the same serious reissue treatment usually reserved for jazz titles with heavier marketing budgets and more men in linen jackets pretending they discovered suffering on side two. Originally released in 1962 on Bluesville, Kirkland’s album returned on June 12, 2026 with AAA remastering from the original analog tapes by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab, 180 gram vinyl pressed at Quality Record Pressings, a tip on jacket, obi strip, and new notes by Scott Billington.
That matters because It’s the Blues Man! is not some minor crate digger footnote pulled from the basement to make completists feel productive. Kirkland was a road-tested guitarist, singer, and songwriter with deep ties to John Lee Hooker, Detroit blues, Chicago blues, and the harder working corners of American music where nobody was waiting around for a luxury reissue campaign. Craft and Acoustic Sounds are treating this record like it belongs in the conversation, which is exactly why Bluesville has been working so well so far.
The same June 12 Bluesville drop also included Albert King’s 1972 Stax classic I’ll Play the Blues for You, another AAA 180 gram reissue that will get its own review here. Together, the two releases show Craft building something more meaningful than a nostalgia lane for blues fans. This is a reminder that blues records do not need to be polished into polite audiophile wallpaper.
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Eddie Kirkland was not shaped by classrooms, critics, or anyone’s tidy blues origin story. His own account placed his birth in Jamaica in 1923, though the details around his early life have never been perfectly clean, which somehow feels appropriate for a musician who spent most of his career moving. Raised in Alabama, Kirkland learned by doing: church music, street corners, road bands, long nights, bad rooms, better rooms, and whatever passed for opportunity when nobody was handing out invitations.
Detroit became one of the important stops. That is where Kirkland spent years working with John Lee Hooker, which was less a job than a nightly lesson in feel, instinct, and how to survive behind a performer who did not always treat rhythm like a posted speed limit. Kirkland absorbed that looseness without becoming a copy. He had his own thing: lean, sharp, direct, and a little rough around the edges in the best possible way.
His résumé also includes time with Otis Redding in the early 1960s as guitarist and bandleader, which should stop anyone from treating him like a footnote. You do not get that role by being decorative. Kirkland understood how to frame a singer, lead a band, and keep the music moving without dragging attention away from the song.
It’s the Blues Man! arrived in 1962 on Tru-Sound, the short-lived Prestige imprint, and it sounds like a record made by someone who had already put in the miles. Rudy Van Gelder engineered the session, and the presence of King Curtis and his band gives the album its shape: tight, swinging, and grounded in R&B without losing its blues center. There is no museum dust here, and thankfully no attempt to make Kirkland sound more respectable than necessary.
The album moves with real range. “Train Done Gone” has forward motion, “Man of Stone” digs into a tougher groove, and its later appearance in John Mayall’s world says something about how far Kirkland’s writing carried. The slower material, including “I’m Gonna Forget You” and “Have Mercy on Me,” shows that Kirkland did not need volume or stage theatrics to make the songs land. He could pull back and still hold the room, which is usually where the better blues singers separate themselves from the microphone abusers.
I had the new Craft Bluesville LP and the hi-res 24-bit/192 kHz reissue available at the same time, which made the comparison useful. The hi-res version is good and absolutely worth hearing. It is clean, immediate, and gives the session plenty of life. But the vinyl is better. Not because of the usual “vinyl has soul” bumper sticker nonsense, but because the LP gives the instruments more body, the rhythm section more weight, and Kirkland’s voice a more convincing place inside the room. I’ll get into that in the listening notes, but the record does a better job of making the band feel like a band rather than a very good transfer.
Because I was in Florida with one of my parents in the hospital, the vinyl had to wait. That was not exactly the moment to set up a turntable, cue a record, and start debating pressing noise like some emotionally unavailable audiophile goblin. My first real exposure to It’s the Blues Man! came through the hi-res 24-bit/192 kHz reissue, streamed from my iPhone and laptop through the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 and Sennheiser HDB 630, two wireless headphones I had just finished running through a serious shoot-out.
Even in that format, the character of the recording came through quickly. This is a gritty, slightly raw, authentic blues record, and that is part of its appeal. It does not have the same polish, scale, or studio sophistication as Albert King’s I’ll Play the Blues for You, and it should not be judged as if it were trying to. Kirkland’s album feels more pulled back and less physically imposing. His voice is present, but not pushed forward into your lap, and the soundstage is not especially wide or deep.
What it does have is immediacy, texture, and a believable sense of musicians playing together without too much studio gloss getting in the way. The hi-res version sounds clean enough to make the case for the album, but the presentation remains leaner and more compact than the Albert King reissue. That is not a flaw so much as the nature of the recording. It’s the Blues Man! is not luxurious blues. It is working blues, and it sounds like it.
Pressing quality on the Craft Bluesville LP is strong. My copy was quiet, properly centered, and free of any obvious issues that would pull attention away from the music.
If I had to choose between the two Bluesville releases, the Albert King album is the more polished and immediately impressive listen. I’ll Play the Blues for You has more scale, more weight, and a more refined studio presentation. Kirkland’s It’s the Blues Man! is rougher, leaner, and more pulled back, but that is also part of its character.
Our Ratings
★★★★★★★★★★ Album
★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality
★★★★★★★★★★ Pressing Quality
Where to buy
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- Bluesville Is Back: Craft Recordings Revives The Legendary Label With John Lee Hooker’s That’s My Story And Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Blues In My Bottle
- Terry Callier “The New Folk Sound” Review: Craft & Bluesville Stop The Vinyl Neglect At Last
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