The biography of Blind Blake remains sketchy, but his recorded legacy is rich and his status as a guitar master is unquestioned. Blake’s repertoire of blues and ragtime was showcased by a string of popular releases on the Paramount label between 1926 and 1932. In 1934, Blind Blake died of tuberculosis in Milwaukee, at age 38.

Blind Blake’s music has long been enjoyed by blues enthusiasts through a series of reissues beginning in the LP era. There were gaps in his body of work, however. One disc that eluded collectors was Paramount 13123, recorded at Blake’s penultimate session of January 1932, a time when Paramount’s fortunes were fast crumbling. By then the company was shipping only minuscule quantities of records to select dealers and distributors, and few have survived to the present day.

Paramount 13123 finally came to light in 2007 when it was retrieved from an old steamer trunk in a trailer park in Raleigh, NC, and acquired by Marshall Wyatt of Old Hat Records.