Ostensibly an instructional blues harp album (with an exhaustive accompanying book penned by Charlie), this is emotional and listenable rather than academic. Charlie covers a wide range of blues styles (and harp positions), and ventures to the outer fringes of the genre for the instrumentals “Hard Times” (from Ray Charles’s sax man David “Fathead” Newman) and his Latin original “Azul Para Amparo” (backed only by guitarist Sam Mitchell). The English studio band is sympathetic, especially pianist Bob Hall. – Dan Forte