In his review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted "if you're going to be buying two discs to get the full Muddy Waters story, you should get this instead of two separate discs, since it's simply easier.".[1]
In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked the album at No. 38 on its list of greatest albums, writing:
The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues – and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. Jimi Hendrix adapted Waters' "Rollin' Stone" for "Voodoo Chile," Bob Dylan found inspiration in it for "Like a Rolling Stone," and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards took their band's name from it. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps – and they only scratch the surface of Waters' legacy.[4]
Disc two starts off with "My Eyes (Keep Me in Trouble)" plus three further tracks from His Best: 1947 to 1955. Sixteen more tracks on the disc were on His Best: 1956 to 1964 – the four tracks excluded are "All Aboard" (though the remake from the 1969 album Fathers and Sons is present), "She's Into Something", "You Need Love" (later made into "You Need Loving" and "Whole Lotta Love"), and "My Love Strikes Like Lightning". The other tracks on disc two were featured on The Chess Box.
