Plug It In! Turn It Up! Part 1 to Part 4 [1939-2005] (12 x CDs) | Butterboy

VA – Plug It In! Turn It Up! Part 1 to Part 4 [1939-2005] (12 x CDs)

A set like Plug It In! Turn It Up! Electric Blues The Definitive Collection 

tends to reveal itself slowly, not through any single disc but through the 

way it settles across all four volumes. 

Twelve CDs in total, issued as a connected series, it gathers electric 

blues recordings from the point where amplification 

begins to reshape the music, and follows that current forward without 

forcing it into a strict narrative.

It helps to dip in rather than start at the beginning. 

A track built around a sharp, overdriven guitar line leads into something 

looser, then into a groove that leans more on rhythm than melody. 

Across the set, that balance keeps shifting. Early recordings still carry 

the structure of acoustic blues, just pushed through an amplifier. 

As the discs move forward, the sound thickens. Bands tighten, rhythms 

become more insistent, and the guitar begins to take a more central role.

Names come and go, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, 

not as isolated highlights but as part of a wider field of players working 

within the same language. 

The sequencing keeps them grounded in that shared space, rather than 

lifting any one performance above the rest.

What gives the series its shape is accumulation. Repeated patterns, 

familiar chord movements, and variations in tone begin to connect across discs. 

A riff heard early on reappears later in a different form, a rhythm returns 

with more weight behind it. 

The differences are there, but they sit within a consistent approach.

Heard across multiple sittings, the set feels less like a history lesson and more 

like a long current of sound. The details shift, the energy rises and falls, but the 

core remains steady, one amplified voice following another, carrying the 

same idea forward without needing to resolve it. 

(Butterboy)

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The tracklisting is a bit big to share here but clink on the link and check it out at Butterboy’s HQ

You won’t regret it, its an awesome collection and if there is but one number you don’t have you really need to check this out