Between 1993 and 1997, Orbis Publishing released a partworks series entitled "The Blues Collection". The series comprised 90 fortnightly issues, each including a thin magazine-sized biography (each 12 pages long) and an album on CD or cassette tape. There were also two bonus issues, both (confusingly) entitled "The Blues at Christmas : The Very Best of the Blues", released midway through the collection but with the catalog numbers BLU NCC 093 and BLU NCC 094. This same series was released by Orbis in Germany, starting in 1994, and also by DeAgostini in the Netherlands and Belgium.

However, it appears that for whatever reason, Orbis re-sequenced the issues between the initial UK release and subsequent releases. This page attempts to document the discrepancies between the releases as an aid to MusicBrainz editors.

Furthermore, it appears that only 75 CDs were released in Germany.

The Australian release of this series omitted 6 titles for legal (copyright?) reasons - Little Milton, Jimmy Rogers, Eddie Boyd, Willie Dixon, Robert Nighthawk & Forrest City Joe and finally Jimmy McCracklin. Citation

Pending further information from my contact at DeAgostini UK, here is a list of all the known releases with known catalog numbers. The last column indicates a mismatch in the sequence numbers between releases, which would require clones to be created in the MusicBrainz database.

It appears that some of the German catalog numbers listed here do not match entries at discogs.com . e.g. BLU GNC 030 and BLU GNC 046 turn up entirely different results. Further clarification required.

Additionally, at least one misprint occurred during the course of the print runs.

Due to a printing mistake, when issue 83 (Jimmy Johnson: Country Preacher) of the UK run was originally published, the CD contained the music from issue 57 (Eddie Vinson: Cleanhead Blues). Citations: 1, 2. Subscribers were sent a corrected CD with the next issue, but in many cases this may have been lost or misfiled, particularly as the two CDs are not distinguishable by sight.

The mistake is particularly liable to cause confusion not only because the case of the misprinted CD contained liner notes for issue 83, but also because the track listing for issue 83 was printed on the CD itself! The only way to determine whether you have the misprinted CD or the corrected one is to listen to it - on CD 57, Eddie Vinson cries Wait a Minute Baby at almost exactly a minute into track 2; CD 83, on the other hand, opens with Jimmy Johnson announcing I'm Just Like a Country Preacher within the first 20 or 30 seconds of the first track.