The Album
Bluebird Blues marked guitarist Dave Specter's first album as a bandleader for Delmark after years as a session and backing player on the Chicago club circuit, and it introduced him in partnership with Barkin' Bill Smith, a veteran Chicago shouter who had been singing the blues for decades without a recording of his own. The pairing let the young guitarist's clean, jazz-inflected lead lines sit against Smith's seasoned, full-throated vocals, with the album drawing on the deep well of postwar Chicago and West Side blues as well as original material. Guest guitarist Ronnie Earl, then building his reputation from his work with Roomful of Blues and his own Black Top sessions, was brought in to trade licks with Specter, giving several tracks a two-guitar conversation at their core. The backing band, billed as the Bluebirds, were drawn from the city's working blues scene and gave the record a tight, clubby rhythm-section feel typical of the Delmark house sound of the period. The album helped establish Specter as a bandleader worth watching and gave Barkin' Bill Smith the overdue showcase that led to a long association with Specter's subsequent bands. It sits as an early marker in the resurgence of Chicago blues documented by independent labels in the early 1990s, valued by genre listeners for its unpretentious, deeply idiomatic playing and for pairing a rising star with an overlooked elder statesman of the scene.
The Label
The side labels show Delmark's white background design with the square blue 'd' arrow logo, a double blue rule above and below the spindle, and the Chicago address 4243 N. Lincoln, Chicago, IL 60618 printed at the foot along with 'printed in the U.S.A.' No earlier or later label design for this catalogue number has been found to compare it against, so this is simply the label as issued with the album's original 1991 release; the jacket's slightly different typesetting of the catalogue line (DELMARK • DS 652 • STEREO STEREO) versus the label's DS-652 A/B is a printing variance between jacket and label stock, not evidence of a separate issue. The jacket barcode places manufacture in the barcode era (1980 or later), which is fully consistent with this record's own 1991 release date.
Fidelity
The album was tracked and mixed at a Chicago recording facility with in-house engineering typical of Delmark's early-1990s blues sessions, aiming for a direct, club-style capture of the two-guitar front line and horn section rather than an audiophile treatment. No specialist audiophile remaster or reissue of this title is known to exist, so this standard domestic stereo pressing represents the only widely available cut of the album. Collectors regard it as a solid, unfussy representation of the session rather than a hi-fi showcase, consistent with Delmark's working-band blues catalogue of the period.
Notes
This is the 1991 US Delmark stereo LP release of Bluebird Blues. The side labels carry Delmark's standard white-ground 'd' logo design with the Lincoln Avenue, Chicago address, matching the label's contemporaneous output, and the runouts read D-652-A RE-1 / D-652-B RE-1, consistent with a routine first-run stamper for this catalogue number. The jacket barcode further confirms a post-1980 manufacture, which lines up exactly with the record's 1991 release rather than suggesting any earlier or later pressing.
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