Endless Blues Records founder Mick Kolassa has announced the Essentials series, a label and career spanning series of digital-only compilations, featuring all newly remastered tracks from his, and the label’s, extensive catalog. The first release in the series will be Slow Blues Essentials, due out March 31st.
To celebrate, Kolassa has released “Baby’s Got Another Lover,” the lead-off track, as a single. Featuring a soul-searing guitar solo from longtime collaborator Jeff Jensen, the song perfectly sets the tone for the record, delivering the kind of blues the genre was built on; songs that speak to pain, adversity and navigating the monkey wrenches life throws your way.
My most played songs, on radio and streaming online, are slow blues,” Kolassa notes on the origin of the idea for the series. “Even reviewers have pointed them out. Around the same time I noticed that ‘Baby’s Got Another Lover’ was approaching one million streams on Spotify, a friend said, ‘If you have a song that gets played a lot and you re-release and/or remaster it, it exponentially multiplies your plays.’
Mick Kolassa
So I started putting together a slow blues essentials playlist. That idea took root, and I dove in and started going through my entire catalog and realized I had enough material to do a series. After Slow Blues Essentials, there will be Americana Essentials in late April, then Endless Blues Essentials, which is a compilation with everyone on the label in late May. Then, sometime in June or July, we’ll have Uncovered Essentials, which is all ostensibly non-blues cover songs where I’ve dug in and bluesified them.
Finally, the series will finish later in the summer with Essentially Not Serious, which is a collection of songs that are more lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek. It’s a more upbeat note to end it with, and strikes a nice balance to the heavier way the series starts.
