Trad Jazz's premier Blues singer on a reissue of a classic album. The late George Melly described Ottilie Patterson as "Bessie Smith Reincarnated" when she made her first appearance with Chris Barber's Jazz Band at the Royal Festival Hall in 1955. She swiftly became the premier Blues singer on the Trad Jazz scene and, although she retired from singing in 1966, she still retains a huge fan base. Despite appearing on most of the Chris Barber CDs over the next 11 years she only made one Jazz album devoted exclusively to herself and even that was called "Chris Barber's Blues Book". It revealed a departure from the Vaudeville Blues of Bessie Smith and a move towards the R'n'B of Memphis Minnie, Ruth Brown and Big Maceo. This followed the Barber band working with blues artists such as Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Howling Wolf and Jimmy Cotton amongst others. The rest of the CD is made up of an EP, some very rare tracks and some previously unreleased material. The two previous releases Lake has made devoted to Ottilie Patterson have been in the top three best sellers since the label's inception 25 years ago – one of the others contains the recordings of that 1955 concert!