Happy Woman Blues, originally released in 1980 on Folkways Records, was Lucinda Williams' second album and the first made up entirely of her own songs; her debut a year earlier had held nothing but covers. She recorded it with producer Mickey White and a six-piece band, in a mix of country, folk and blues that goes back to her Louisiana childhood. Songs such as Lafayette, King Of Hearts and Sharp Cutting Wings (Song To A Poet) already point to what her later work would build on: narrative lyrics and a voice that refuses to sound polished. Writing in The Village Voice, Robert Christgau called her 'a guileless throwback to the days of the acoustic blues mamas'. This edition is an LP.