The 1960s British blues boom's favourite Louisiana bluesman (his song I'm A King Bee was an early Rolling Stones' cover), Slim Harpo remains the state's seminal swamp bluesman. His lazily drawled, bluesy vocals, framed by fleet-of-note guitar, simple harmonica and grinding funky rhythm section, helped define a timeless form of modern blues that was rooted in Deep South tradition.Towards the end of his brief life, however, Slim was busy modifying his blues with elements drawn from the then-voguish soul and progressive rock genres. At the time of their first release, many blues purists were apt to dismiss these trends and recordings out of hand. With hindsight, though, the blues produced at the end of Slim's career sound as strong as anything he recorded earlier (and they benefit from the weight added to the musical fidelity by their improved studio sound and stereo recording).These 25 sides include Slim's classic and truthful version of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues, a threatening, slow-grinding Jody Man, a sly, boastful Dynamite ("I'm dynamite pretty baby/All you do is light my fuse"), a great version of (the much over-recorded) Rock Me Baby, the southern-fried recipe of Tee-Ni-Nee-Ni-Nu and the classic 2-part Tip On In. Guitarist Lynn Ourso, who played on Harpo's later Baton Rouge Sessions recalled: "It was a dream working with Slim Harpo because he was my hero..We lost one of the greats when Slim died".