Sykes was known to the ladies—and therefore to the boogie-woogie world—as “The Honey Dripper,” but he was a shouter, not a lover, schooled in the very earliest days of barrelhouse blues piano and blessed with a voice as loud as a barfight.

If you were never fortunate enough to catch him playing around New Orleans in the ’70s and early ’80s, you have a chance to catch him at his best with this CD, a remastered collection of everything he recorded for the United label between 1951 and 1953.

For those of you who owned the original vinyl version of this collection, the CD upgrade adds on alternate takes of “Fine And Brown,” “Listen To My Song (She’s The One For Me)” and “4:00 Blues,” as well as “Come Back Baby,” whose piano stroll will be familiar to any fan of vintage local R&B, and a remake of his earliest hit, 1929’s murderous “44 Blues.”

Neophytes will get a kick out of the way he blends fieldhand wailing with urban cool on some of his best-known songs (the title track and “Security Blues”), not to mention the celesta-and-violin oddity “Toy Piano Blues.”

The police department will not like this album very much at all, if you play it as loud as it demands during poker night or the next time your best girl comes over for an all-nighter.