They clearly know the blues masters well, but their most obvious inspiration is the Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band that in 1972 released Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, the two “accessible” albums that preceded Beefheart’s hapless attempt to “go commercial” with Unconditionally Guaranteed. But despite some of the sprung rhythms, clanking guitar and singer Joe Doerr’s voice, this band doesn’t really sound that much like Beefheart; the biggest thing they took from him is the understanding that the only way most white kids can play blues credibly and keep ‘em sounding fresh is by using blues only as a taking-off point — and that having done that, you’d damn well better have something to say or you’re just wanking in the wind. Doerr was a founding member of Austin’s Leroi Brothers, a harder-than-hard-edged roots band that played every song like it was trying to stay one step ahead of the police. Churchwood has much the same approach: You can practically feel the sweat pouring out of your speakers, except it’s much thicker — swampier — than real sweat. Doerr rides it like some weird water-park attraction. His voice has Beefheart’s power and gruffness, with a little Tom Waits mixed in there too, and when he breaks into one of his versions of Howlin Wolf’s nonverbal semi-yodeling articulations he is without affectation. He sounds really cool.

Doerr quit music in the ’80s for nearly two decades to go back to college, ultimately winning his doctorate from Notre Dame and then returning to Austin to teach writing and literature at a local private college. The lyrics he writes for Churchwood are a sort of gutter poetry in which French symbolism meets American beats’ free verse, stirred up by a bit of a Screaming Jay Hawkins gross-out. He is not the type who wakes up in the morning and looks around for his shoes because he has those mean ol’ blues. On “Keels Be Damned,” he bellows, “I’m coughing bullshit through my fists/ Crossing fables off my list.” Those lines are more like the bellows of Muddy Waters in “Mannish Boy” and “Seventh Son,” Bo Diddley in “Who Do You Love.” Plus, they’ve got terrific rhythm. Don’t always rhyme, but that’s okay.

Slide guitarist Billysteve Korpi is perhaps better known for his work with the Crack Pipes, arguably Austin’s top garage band. Guitarist Bill Anderson first made his name with the local post-punk roots band Poison 13. There’s no apparent reason why they should sound as stirring as they do, because they don’t really play off each other the way you’d expect; usually it’s more like they’re both soloing at the same time but both soloes work together sublimely. Check out this interplay on the likes of the swampy “Weedeye” or the vehement “Fake This One.”

The other thing the band does to keep things interesting is change tempo several times in one song. The rhythm section doesn’t lay down a blues groove in the conventional sense; they maraud through three or so grooves in one song. That can’t help but keep things from becoming too predictable in that white blooz way. You’re never quite sure what’s coming next, but you know it’s worth sticking around to find out. Until he joined Churchwood, drummer Julien Peterson had been a bass player. But he had the notion that the drummer of this band had to be able to play just behind the behind. Not coincidentally, that’s where you’ll find all the great blues band rhythm sections, and it allows the other players to slide in and out of the groove like Chuck Berry’s cool breeze. In the case of Churchwood, it gives the other players the opening they need to take the sound wherever they wish to while still remaining anchored. And that’s what they do on this album, much more than on their first. This one marks a significant growth over their debut, while leaving plenty of room for further growth on (what will presumably be) Churchwood 3.

Nothing will ever replace the great old bluesmen, and nothing should try. Because this band in fact doesn’t try, it sounds and feels pretty good alongside them. Similar, but different, it occupies its own little niche. Most listeners will describe them as a rock band rather than a blues band, but there’s nothing saying you have to believe that.

Those three blues artists are the Mississippi Sheiks, Blind Willie McTell and Charley Patton. The first two have a lighter, simpler and more melodic approach than Patton, but all three are exemplary entertainers. Across the whole spectrum of blues, which is much more diverse than it’s ever given credit for, some artists are just like that, no matter how harsh the sound of their music — Robert Johnson, for example, put out deeply emotional music with an undeniably rough sound, but he also wrote irresistible hooks and formalized the verse-chorus pattern of American popular music in the blues. He went that distance to make his music, however searing, more accessible to more people; that’s (along with mystique) a big part of the reason he’s by far the most popular early artist of the blues revival that been off and on since the 1950s. With that in mind, let’s look at the three new Third Man reissues.

The Mississippi Sheiks: The Complete Recorded Works Presented in Chronological Order, Volume 1 documents the Delta string band built around members of the Chatmon Family, most prominently Armenter Chatmon, known professionally as Bo Carter. Drawing on white as well as black rural traditions including blues, pop, hokum, country and folk, their guitar-fiddle sound made them one of the most popular acts of the 1930s, even though they only recorded for the first half of that decade. The interplay between Carter’s oily voice and Lonnie Chatmon’s scratchy fiddle is as otherworldly when sweet as when severe. Their 1930 “Sitting on Top of the World,” written by Sheiks guitarist Lonnie Chatmon the morning after a triumphant gig at a white dance, was a crossover even back then — it’s since been revived by Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Ray Charles, Howlin’ Wolf, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Les Paul, White and countless others — and the group’s influence on American music is everywhere. You can hear it in the stateliness of “The Sheik Waltz,” the skittering heat of “The Jazz Fiddler,” the carefree country of “We Are Both Feeling Good Right Now,” the hoodoo of “Stop and Listen Blues,” the down-and-out moan of “Winter Time Blues” or the wit of “Grinding Old Fool.”

As an Atlanta bluesman, Blind Willie McTell also made music lighter, bouncier and less dark than the most tortured Delta blues; this ragtimey sound is usually called Piedmont blues and McTell was perhaps its greatest master, picking his 12-string guitar with both agility and elegance. His nasal warble had a touch of country in it, and his repertoire included blues and ragtime, spirituals, ballads, pop, folk, hillbilly and story-songs that sometimes had vaudeville and/or medicine show overtones. Like the Sheiks, Willie cut his calling-card number, the brilliantly-constructed “Statesboro Blues,” which the Allman Brothers popularized more than four decades later, at his first sessions (in ’27). But he never ran out of melodies, licks or ideas. Listen on his Volume 1 to the way his guitar fills alternate between high and low strings on “Mamma ‘Taint Long Fo’ Day,” or his carousing slide on “Three Women Blues,” for a display of his nimbleness as a picker; it’s as if there were two different guitarists on these songs. Or to the stunning lyrics of “Dark Night Blues” (“Drink so much whiskey/ I’m stagger when I sleep/ My brains are dark and cloudy/ My mind’s gone to my feet”). Or the happy-go-lucky way he acts out “Atlanta Strut” with his guitar and the percussive effects he gets from it on “Drive Away Blues.” McTell’s reach was arguably the broadest of anyone of his era who called himself a bluesman, and he presumably seduced a wide range of listeners on the street corners where he did most of his singing.

You might think the whole entertainer analogy among these three breaks down with Charley Patton. After all, his growling, gravelly voice is forceful enough to unnerve a Howlin’ Wolf fan, and his layered, impossibly intricate rhythms effortlessly conjure up West Africa. It’s the kind of stuff people are talking about when they refer to “authentic” blues. Yet “intricate” shouldn’t be confused with “driving” or “aggressive.” On “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues,” his playing exploits hesitations, shifting accents and rhythmic variations to garrote what is generally a laid-back piece with relaxed vocals. On the astonishing “Down the Dirt Road Blues,” he gets three rhythms going simultaneously — one with his voice, one with his guitar lines and one by tapping his guitar.

So yes, Charley Patton was a ferocious Delta bluesman, perhaps the form’s true father. But only about half his 50-plus sides are even blues; as the oldest Delta bluesman to record, he worked in all the other forms that his audience would expect of a pre-blues rural entertainer. His Volume 1 embraces religious songs (“Lord I’m Discouraged”) and folk ballads (“Mississippi Boweavil Blues”), ragtime novelties (“Shake It and Break It”) and familiar slide guitar standards (“Spoonful”), even “composed folk” topical songs like “Tom Rushen Blues” (or his opus “High Water Everywhere” about the 1927 Mississippi River flood, which will appear on a subsequent album). So when Patton turns out something like “Pony Blues,” doubtless his most influential blues, he’s showing just a fraction of what he can do. Plus, live he was unabashedly show biz, playing guitar behind his head or between his legs, peppering songs with vaudevillian asides and the like. Fellow Delta bluesmen who only saw him live considered him a clown; they were then shocked to hear his records in all their fierceness and complexity.

Ultimately, the “performer” designation unites these three artists when their sounds are so different. At a segregated time when record companies confined “race music” to a particular market these guys worked hard to get around the limitations being imposed on them. Today, they face a different kind of segregation, that imposed by the “purist.” But they all, each in his own way, rise above it…again.

Now, with the release of Robert Randolph Presents The Slide Brothers, co-produced by Randolph and John McDermott and featuring steel players Calvin Cooke, Aubrey Ghent and Chuck and Darick Campbell, the style gets its best shot yet at a wider audience. The album’s made up mostly of pop and rock songs with a spiritual bent (George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”) and spirituals with established crossover appeal (“Wade in the Water”), but also includes secular tunes (The Allman Brothers’ “Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’”). The musicians — unfortunately, not a single track features all five — show off their funk, blues, country, rock, pop and jazz licks while staying true to their faith. “It’s always sorta been my vision to get everybody together and do this the right way, in a good studio, using songs non-church people could relate to,” Randolph says.

There’s a price for taking their music outside the House of God. After that first wave of Arhoolie albums, the Campbells began playing occasional festivals and venues (like coffeehouses) where alcohol wasn’t served. Although they still performed only religious material, they were banned from playing in the church. Randolph left the church by hitting the road to play his secular material, and never tried to return; Cooke, the patriarch of current musicians after playing services for 57 years, was dismissed for touring with Randolph. Ghent likewise was banished from his Florida church after doing sacred material at secular gigs, but was taken in at a Nashville House of God; because he’s now its pastor, he participates here only on songs that have a spiritual grounding. Most of them still worship in the House of God; they just don’t play services anymore, and they’re okay with the tradeout. “I enjoy exploring my music more,” Cooke explains. “I wanted to venture out.”

This music differs from their church music in more than one way. In 1999, I joined Ghent one Sunday at his church in Fort Pierce, Florida. He played nonstop through the entire service — improvising behind the pastor as she built her sermon to a climax, at which point she’d ease off as he either burned his improv to a crescendo or broke into a recognizable song the congregation began singing; then he laid back and she retook control. They passed the lead back and forth between music and preaching, amping it up and then softening it, congregation members speaking in tongues or shaking and writhing in the pews and aisles, for about three straight hours. Ghent played lines that emulated the tones and cadences of the preacher’s voice with a seemingly calm intensity that left his face and suit soaked in sweat. Even the best sacred steel albums, great as several of them are, can’t duplicate that — and similarly, The Slide Brothers can’t match those CDs.

In short, it’s likely to disappoint those who’ve heard any of the sacred albums. “Basically,” Ghent admits, “Here we simply play the songs. In church it’s different: We’re helping the preacher.” Still, there’s much here to love, especially if you’ve never heard any sacred steel. That’s apparent from the opening track, the Allmans’ “Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’,” with Chuck Campbell’s sharp, knifing pedal steel and Darick’s fat lap steel swirling out sheets of sound while bro Phil lays down jagged funk and rock lines on guitar. Factor in Cooke’s equally driving vocals and the fiery outro jam and it’s a thrilling cut by any standards. Fronted by different guest vocalists, the Campbells likewise recast “My Sweet Lord,” Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” and the churning, traditional “Motherless Children,” while starting their instrumental “Wade in the Water” with shimmers and ending it with screams. Cooke brings deep, urgent empathy with both voice and lap steel to his revivals of slide guitar blues king Elmore James’s “The Sky Is Crying” and “It Hurts Me Too,” effectively obliterating distinctions between blues and gospel, and also contributes his original, secular/sacred “Help Me Make It Through.” Ghent, who I hadn’t remembered as much of a singer, proves me wrong on Mylon Lefevre’s “Sunday School Blues” and concludes the album with a bit of levity on “No Cheap Seats in Heaven.”

All five steel men are adamant that despite House of God’s rigorous insularity, the sound has a strong future both inside and outside the church. Cooke notes that there are more teenagers within the HoG taking up the instrument than ever before, while Randolph adds that Jack White, Kid Rock, Luther Dickinson and current and former Black Crowes Chris Robinson and Jeff Cease are now playing gospel-based lap steel styles; Chuck Campbell has a Finnish student. “It’s an ongoing thing that everyone wants to do, now that they’re getting to understand the story behind the music,” Randolph insists. I just hope they do it right.

Like: He’s an electric guitar pioneer, and had one of the first electric blues bands in the Mississippi Delta and in Chicago. Many said the Broomdusters rocked harder than Muddy’s or Wolf’s bands. A radio repairman by trade, James tinkered with his pickups, wiring and amps to become the first set-’em-on-11 electric guitarist; his explosive sound, screaming with sustained tones, was feral, distorted and densely textured. Near the end, he’d slam his fretboard with his hand, and wrestle what came to be called power chords, out of his instrument. Whether they knew it or not, “heavy” guitarists right up to contemporaries like Dimebag Darrell are as indebted to James as are Hound Dog Taylor, Homesick James, J.B. Hutto and other Chicago slide guitarists who rode the wave he created, as well as non-Chicago bluesmen like B.B. King. A parade of blues-rockers including Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer of early Fleetwood Mac, Brian Jones of the Stones, Duane Allman, Canned Heat, Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Mike Bloomfield with Paul Butterfield, George Thorogood, Jimi Hendrix and others revived James’s songs and did their best to emulate his lick. His voice was nearly as earth-shaking as his guitar, loud and anguished and pushing at the edges of his upper range until it threatened to break up like a radio signal lost in the ether; the original, old-school dictionary definition of “funk” was the noun “panic,” and that’s what Elmore’s voice sounded like. And James was also no slouch as a songwriter, from the simple eloquence of his overhaul of Tampa Red’s “It Hurts Me Too” to the raw imagery of “Bleeding Heart” to the carnal knowledge of “Shake Your Moneymaker.”

Born near Richland, Mississippi, in 1918, Elmore was a youthful running buddy of both Robert Johnson and Sonny Boy Williamson II. By the late ’30s, he already had a band, including drummer, working Delta jook joints; only Robert Lockwood Jr. could make the same claim. Around 1940, Elmore took up electric guitar, and by the time he began recording — with Williamson II, in 1952 — his version of “Dust My Broom” was notorious across the Delta. When James finally cut it with Sonny Boy II blowing harp, the electrified slide created a sensation. Elmore quickly signed with the Bihari Brothers’ family of L.A. labels — most releases were on Flair, though they’re known today as his Modern sides, after the parent company — and moved to Chicago to form the Broomdusters. The band featured piano pounder Johnny Jones and the braying tones of tenor sax man J.T. Brown (the chief soloist besides James), as well as bassist Homesick James (who sometimes added a second guitar) and drummer Odie Payne. The Biharis milked the “Dust My Broom” lick for all it was worth, but all through the ’50s there was apparently a huge gap between the Broomdusters live — reckless but tight, verging on rock — and the singles James cut. Still, it’s hard to argue with diverse and devastating fare like the breakneck “Hawaiian Boogie,” the swamp-tinged “Sho ‘Nuff I Do,” the scorching “Please Find My Baby,” the bopping “Strange Kinda Feeling,” or the slow blues “Sunny Land,” among the most memorable Modern tracks gathered on albums like Let’s Cut It: The Very Best of Elmore James, Best of the Modern Years and Blues Kingpins.

James recorded irregularly during most of the ’50s, largely because his heart condition led him to periodically flee Chicago and the music business for the more restful life back in Mississippi. The seven sides he cut for Chief and the nine for Chess don’t all appear on eMusic, though highlights are scattered across various compilations. These include the mellow, Dixielandish “Madison Blues” on Up Jumped Elmore, the jumping “Cry for Me Baby” on The Blues of Elmore James and “Country Boogie (Tool Bag Boogie)” and “Whose Muddy Shoes” on Elmore James Sings the Blues. But Elmore’s finest body of work is the 50 sides cut over five sessions between 1959-63 for New York entrepreneur Bobby Robinson’s Fire/Fury/Enjoy, which are scattered across Shake Your Moneymaker, The Sky Is Crying, Standing at the Crossroads and others.

Robinson was the only real producer James ever had, and together they reached back for new versions of old favorites — both their muscular versions of “Dust My Broom” make the original sound positively quaint — while also fashioning some of the most hellacious postwar blues ever. Robinson cut James with the Broomdusters, in quartets, and with studio bands containing full horn sections; Elmore played slide on some and ultra-modern lead on others. The very first session yielded “The Sky is Crying,” which quickly joined “Dust My Broom” and “It Hurts Me Too” as EJ calling cards. If “Something Inside Me” isn’t his most gut-wrenching slow blues ever, then “I Need You” is. “Done Somebody Wrong” rides jackhammer riffing, while the off-kilter “Bobby’s Rock” floats on Duane Eddyish guitar. “One Way Out” is frantic. The remake of Robert Johnson’s “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” manages to sound simultaneously archaic and right up to date. But at his best, Elmore James, whose heart ailments killed him three months after his final Robinson sessions, always sounded both archaic and right up to date. He wore his Delta roots on his sleeve, and he was forever trying to wrench new sounds out of his guitar.

A blues set that's more than just a curiosity

Yeah, that Doc Pomus, the one who wrote such ’50s and ’60s rock ‘n’ roll standards as “Save the Last Dance for Me” for the Drifters, “Teenager in Love” for Dion and the Belmonts and “Little Sister” for Elvis. Inspired by the powerhouse voice of Big Joe Turner, Doc entered the record biz as a jazzy, jump blues shouter. He turned to writing after realizing he’d never make it as a performer, especially as a white blues singer. But you know what? He sang with real feeling for the blues, making this set more than just a curiosity. He swings on “Too Much Boogie,” rocks on three versions of “Bye Baby Bye,” belts on “Pomus Blues,” makes with the double entendre on “Pool Playing Baby” and croons something suspiciously like a rock ‘n’ roll ballad in the title song. He also had access to the better New York sessions cats, so his records usually sound good, if not quite good enough that he really could have been a blues star. In other words, Doc made the right move.

Though he emerged in an era when singers dominated blues, he and his acolytes made electric guitar the instrument that mattered most. The consummate artist, he’s worked just as hard to become the consummate entertainer. Playing gutbucket music born and raised in juke joints, he and his horn-heavy bands have always been the nattiest lookers on the block. Today, with the real blues closer to extinction than ever, even as mutant fragments remain at the core of most American music, most true rock and roll fans have heard the name “B.B. King.” He has in many ways transcended the idiom.

And yet he’s never left it, either. And except for the manner in which age changes all musicians — hell, all humans — King hasn’t changed his music much in order to get it heard by ever-widening audiences. Instead, he’s moved into the mainstream through the inherent power and the force of his own humble, gracious personality. His style developed and matured fairly quickly; since then, he’s constantly honed it, paring it down to its absolute essence. And what could be more essential than B.B. King’s brand of blues?

What would you say is the relationship of your music to blues now?

Blues is the foundation of everything I do. When I started playing I was going to blues bars, blues jams, around Austin. Learning about Stevie Ray Vaughan, Elmore James, Robert Johnson…that’s how I learned to play, starting with the Texas guys like Freddie King, T-Bone Walker and Mance Lipscomb. But I grew up on soul music — Stevie Wonder, the Jacksons, Marvin Gaye. Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, there was all kinds of sounds happening, so that’s what I knew. When I was in my teens I met [Austin blues impresario] Clifford Antone and he put everything on me. Next thing I knew I was onstage playing with Albert Collins, Jimmie Vaughan, Hubert Sumlin.

After Honeydripper, you seemed to lay out a bit, and you weren’t playing much at all. What was going on during that time?

I’d spent a lot of time mimicking other people. I’d played lots of blues covers in sets instead of originals. I needed to try to find my own voice. I spent days at a time in one little room, without ever leaving it, trying to find myself musically. I taught myself drums, horns, began playing keyboards; I played drums in some local bands. I was trying to figure out how all those instruments worked, and how I could use them. I experimented with my guitar tone, trying to figure out what worked for me. The rest of the time I was hanging out with friends and catching up, something I hadn’t done that much as a kid. The songs I wrote then were blues songs but kinda fonky, hip-hoppy, with jazz even, and I’d thought I could never play that in clubs because all they wanted from me was blues. I drove myself crazy holding all that other music back, so I put all my influences into one bag rather than keeping them separate. That’s when I wrote “Bright Lights,” which was raw and somewhat psychedelic. It was also exactly what I wanted to do, and since then I’ve been able to put all those different kinds of music into my own music.

It seems to be working fine; what happened this last year that all of a sudden, after all this time, you were able to make such a splash?

I’ve been fortunate enough to play music festivals, not just blues festivals. Rather than being off with one kind of music I’m playing my music for all kinds of people. So really, I think it’s just a combination of having Warner Brothers on my team and then getting out and playing these festivals, spreading the word. Now, it’s a whole new ballgame. The cool thing is, people at these festivals are really open and receptive to whatever we do. We’ll play a smooth, falsetto soul thing and they like that; then we’ll play something raw and funky and they’re equally receptive to that. The audience and the band both, they show up and want to be in the moment, to share what is.

Then what do you see happening next, short-term and long-term?

Short-term, I’m happy right where I am now. Long- term my goal is mainly to get out and see more places, to grow as an artist and a human. And to see the crowds grow. I see the music going everywhere; that’s the fun of it. Someone like B.B. King, he’s really diverse and his music goes in all directions but it’s still blues. That’s the kind of thing I want to happen with my own music. Right now I’m listening to a lot of Robert Johnson, so we’ll see where that takes me.

That’s the question Bob Riesman tackles in his biography I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy, just published in paperback. He mainly discovers there’s no wholly satisfactory answer, but he unravels a complicated and revealing story along the way. And it’s one that needed to be told, because perhaps this book’s greatest revelation is that Big Bill’s own autobiography Big Bill Blues, William Broonzy’s Story, long billed as the first blues memoir, is in fact almost entirely made up, a grandiose job of self-mythologizing that makes the young Bob Dylan seem like an innocuous little tale-teller. Riesman goes to great lengths to show how, in doing so, Broonzy was consciously playing a sort of black Everyman, using his own stature to consolidate stories that told what life was like for African Americans of that time and place. Given Broonzy’s own propensity for writing songs either covertly or overtly about racial injustice, it’s a hard explanation to shoot down, but it may still leave you wondering.

After arriving in Chicago in the early ’20s, the man born Bradley Lee Conley in Arkansas dabbled in other work before committing to music. Working himself into the Melrose operations by 1929, he eventually became a Willie Dixon figure well before Willie Dixon did. Big Bill helped Melrose distinguish the real talent in Chicago, while writing witty and often ironic songs for those artists and serving as a session guitarist (though he was originally a fiddler) and more or less producing the records. He’d first appeared on disc (“Big Bill Blues” b/w “House Rent Stomp”) in 1928, and as the music evolved, he proved adaptable. He cut definitive hokum records with Tampa Red, Georgia Tom (Dorsey), Jazz Gillum and Washboard Sam (his half-brother). His first records under his own name (mistakenly printed as Broomsley) came out in 1930; his “I Can’t Be Satisfied” gave him his first hit. The so-called “Bluebird beat” (named after the RCA blues subsidiary label) adding trap drums and stand-up bass to blues guitar and/or piano was largely Broonzy’s creation. He worked with the kind of jazzy blues ensembles then developing in the cities, and when piano-guitar duets a la Leroy Carr-Scrapper Blackwell came into vogue, he picked up on those, too. His original, ragtimey guitar evolved into a more assertive, rawer, flat-picking style while retaining the pulsating bounce that had always propelled it. His vocals, notable for their clarity and smoothness, grew more anguished. Though most of his work for Melrose was released on Bluebird, his own records came out on ARC. And once the effects of the Depression had fully lifted, his solo career soared.

From 1934-42, he was one of the most popular country-rooted bluesmen in the nation. When John Hammond, planning his historic, 1938 Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall, learned that Robert Johnson (the Delta bluesman he wanted) had recently died, he turned to Big Bill, who jolted the audience with his sardonic “Just a Dream” (“Dreamed I was in the White House/ Sittin’ in the president’s chair/ Dreamed he’s shakin’ my hand and said/ ‘Bill, I’m so glad you’re here.’”) He scored with traditional material like “C.C. Rider” and he wrote brilliant new stuff like the dirge “Key to the Highway” and the raunchy “I Feel So Good.” He became a sort of blues ambassador; when Muddy Waters first hit town, it was Broonzy who took him in and showed him the ropes, and Muddy later reciprocated with the tribute album Muddy Waters Sings Big Bill. And Broonzy kept on keeping up with the times. His 1945 “Where the Blues Began” and “Martha Blues” (with Big Maceo and Memphis Slim, respectively, on piano) provided a bridge to the postwar Chicago blues combo style.

In 1946, while still cutting records aimed at black fans, Broonzy began playing more for white audiences, and soon fell in with Win Stracke and Studs Terkel, who were creating the postwar Chicago folk movement. Taking a breather from Chicago and the blues circuit in 1950, Big Bill worked as a janitor at Iowa State, where he also performed to students so skillfully that in 1951 a white friend was able to land him his first European tour. While overseas he finally was able to record “Black, Brown and White,” his most enraged song about race relations; he’d been performing it for years but no American label would touch it. Back in the States later that year, he cut perhaps his final straight-up blues gem, the delightful “Hey, Hey.”

He returned to Europe several times, becoming a huge influence on the ’60s wave of British guitarists (Eric Clapton has cut a pair of Broonzy tunes and Ron Wood still swears by Bill’s “Guitar Shuffle,” while Pete Townsend, who wrote an appreciation for the Riesman book, and Ray Davies are among the others who sing his praises). In the USA, he was perhaps the only blues fixture on the folk circuit who didn’t have to be rediscovered. But his relevance to, and influence on, the black audience was waning just as Chicago blues was peaking. To the mass blues audience that followed in the ’60s, Big Bill Broonzy got lost in the shuffle – but there’s no reason he has to stay that way.

The diddley bow (also known sometimes as a jitterbug) is a one-string guitar once commonly played by Delta children; more formally, ethnomusicologists call it a “monochord zither.” Its origins are probably in central Africa, though West Coast African cultures also used one-string fiddles or lutes. The leaf stalk of the raffia palm was stretched over a hole in the ground, a tub or a pot; then, a sliver of its fiber was raised slightly on two bridges, but still attached to the stalk at both ends. One child would rhythmically tap this “string” with two sticks as a second slid a cup or something similar along it to alter the pitch and create percussive effects. As the instrument persevered among African Americans in the United States into the 20th century, it became a one-person instrument, usually made from broom or baling wire with bottles serving as bridges at either end. The child played with a stick or his finger, using another bottle or similar object as the slide. If the child played very well, he usually switched to the more complicated six-string guitar as he aged, often using a pocketknife instead of a glass bottle as his slide. The diddley bow thus had a significant effect on the shape and style of the blues; even when no slide is involved and the artist is playing a six-string guitar, the menacing one-string runs of John Lee Hooker (whose “Boogie Chillun” is performed by Pitchford here) or the dazzling one-string solos of B.B. King make that clear. Elmore James is just one major bluesman who professed to have first learned music on a diddley bow as a child.

But almost certainly because the diddley bow was a children’s instrument, the recording industry ignored it even in the 1930s, when folklorists first began noting its use in the South. Though nearly all diddley-bow recordings available on eMusic are by tradition-minded musicians prominent on the latter-day folk and festival circuits, there are exceptions. In 1956, one Willie Joe Duncan, listed as Willie Joe and His Unitar, accompanied Bob “Froggy” Landers on the Specialty single “Cherokee Dance.” The unitar, an electric one-string that judging from photos was about twice as big as Duncan, provided explosive, distorted contrast to Landers’s croaking voice on the dance novelty; the flip side, credited solely to Willie Joe and His Unitar, was a spare instrumental called “Unitar Rock” on which the ax sounded at times more like a Jew’s harp. (Duncan later re-cut a more ornate version of the song with guitarist Rene Hall’s Orchestra under the title “Twitchy.”) But alas, these attempts to make the unitar a “commercial” instrument fell on deaf (or weirded-out) ears. Also in 1956, Detroit street musician One-String Sam (Wilson) recorded “I Need a Hundred Dollars” and “My Baby Ooo” in a Hastings Street record store. Sam used a baby-food jar as his slide, holding it so close to his vocal mike that he created his own echo chamber, which made his sproinging (augmented by scraping) country blues sound even stranger.

More recently, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Compton Jones, Glen Faulkner, Napoleon Jones, Super Chikan, Watermelon Slim and others have recorded with diddley bow (while the Reverend KM Williams features the closely-related cigar-box guitar on his two eMusic albums). Hemphill, whose 1983 stroke ended her playing days, showcases the delicate picking of Jones on “Little Rooster Reel” and the sizzling stylings of Faulkner on “Get Right Church,” but no tracks of her playing a one-string are available here. Faulkner’s banjo-like “One-String Blues” appears on Africa and the Blues, as does Strickland’s droning “Key to the Blues (Jitterbug Version).” But the most hair-raising use of diddley bow in recent years is “Diddley-Bo Jam,” from Okiessippi Blues by Watermelon Slim and Super Chikan. For nearly eight minutes, the two men have it like a pair of fighting cocks, jabbing, dodging and twisting around each other, or one providing a steady backdrop as the other gets further and further gone. You gotta hear it.

And just because I know you’re wondering, Bo Diddley never recorded with a diddley bow. A notoriously wily interview subject, the late Ellas Otha Bates (aka Ellas McDaniel) gave several explanations for the origins of his stage name, and none of them mentioned the one-string guitar. But judging from the design of his own box-shaped guitar as well as his raucous, African-derived single-string excursions, I think it is safe to say that Bo Diddley definitely knew the diddley bow.

Born Samuel Moore in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1939, he began gigging locally on piano and organ at age 14. By the late ’50s he was on the scene in Miami where, lacking a stand for his electric organ, he mounted it on an ironing board. When he moved to Memphis around 1959, his instrument earned Sammy Moore the new moniker Ironing Board Sam, which he resented (whoever gave him that handle proved prescient, however, as the ultra-hot Sam & Dave soon emerged from Memphis, and the former’s surname was Moore; the who’s-who confusion caused by having two Sam Moores in the same music scene would likely have killed Ironing Board Sam’s already-meager career). By the mid ’60s, Sam was based in Nashville – I picture him down on Jefferson Street showing the young, unknown Jimi Hendrix what showmanship was all about.

Because make no mistake, Sam was already a showman – a slightly mellower Little Richard crossed with a slightly saner Screaming Jay Hawkins and a slightly less churchy Ray Charles – as he moved back to Memphis, then to Chicago, Iowa, Los Angeles, Memphis once more. Somewhere in there – history is woefully imprecise – Sam invented his “button board,” which was actually two keyboards. The main one looked like a Hammond B3 but underneath the keys were guitar strings that were fed through a wah-wah pedal and into an amp. Not only could he make it sound something like a B3, he could also make it sound like a piano, a guitar and all three combined. The lower keyboard, which provided bass, consisted of 60 upholstery tacks connected to electronic sensors. Under his coat sleeve, a wire ran down Sam’s arm to his fingers, conducting electricity to the buttons. It was just one of his many inventions – among other he claims to have built a machine with just five moving parts that could provide electricity to an entire apartment complex at no cost – and Sam never had to worry about anyone else playing his ax; nobody else could figure out how it worked.

In the mid ’70s Sam moved to New Orleans, where he was in residence, billed as “The Eighth Wonder of the World” and backed only by drummer Kerry Brown, at Mason’s VIP Lounge on South Clairborne. There, he’d lift his keyboard off its stand and strap it onto his shoulder as he strolled the club and sidewalk playing his late-night, lowdown blues; Brown played with the tips of his drumsticks on fire, and sometimes ended the set by burning the whole damn kit. When Sam got booked into Jazzfest in 1979, he did his entire show underwater in a 1500-gallon aquarium. Later, he busked on the streets backed by a wind-up monkey toy that kept time, as it were, on drums. When Sam concluded from the disco trend that audiences would now only listen to jukeboxes or deejays, he built an eight-foot high wooden jukebox, put himself and his keyboard inside it, and played that on French Quarter sidewalks; it had a coin slot that you fed money if you wanted him to take your request. In 1991, playing a vintage Wurlitzer piano, he cut demos for a local Orleans Records album called Human Touch; though unavailable on eMusic, it was finally released in 1996.

And then Sam’s button keyboard was vanquished. Before going on the road, he gave it to an electronics tech to have it transistorized and the guy found the whole project so ludicrous he up and threw it out. Sam claims he’s simply never had time to build a new one. Some of his aura consequently faded in New Orleans and he’d been retired for some time when Katrina savaged the city in 2005. He moved back to his South Carolina birthplace and began gigging again; eventually rediscovered by the Music Makers Relief Organization, a charitable group that helps get Southern roots musicians back on their feet, he recorded and released the solo piano album Going Up, which defines blues broadly enough to include a mellow but tortured version of the Roy Hawkins/B.B. King standard “Why I Sing the Blues,” the eternal ’50s doo-wop “Cherry Pie,” New Orleans parade and party fare like “Orleans Party” and “Come to Mardi Gras,” an aching take on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and a somewhat less successful one on the scat-jazz “In the Mood for Love,” even “Ode to Billie Joe,” which he calls “Tallahassee Bridge (Billy Joe),” and which plays funereal vocals off against chipper boogie piano.

But Ninth Wonder is the Ironing Board Sam album you simply can’t miss, because it was originally recorded in the late ’60s/early ’70s as part of a promo packet to get Sam gigs; only 100 were pressed and sent to agencies, and none were released. And though it uses conventional instruments, it catches the man at his jumpin’, jivin’ and carryin’-on peak. His keyboard work is deep, soulful and playful; his vocals laced with jazz and gospel as well as blues. This version of “Cherry Pie,” even with its staccato rhythm and vocals, is a powerful argument for the axiom that Simple is Best; “The Island Song” features semi-scat vocals, while “Do the Ironing Board” is utter, delightful nonsense, with Sam eventually creaking up into a comical falsetto. “Danny Boy,” of all things, gets taken to church by the organ/guitar tandem. Sam’s version of “Boogie on Reggae Woman,” another unlikely choice, is in its own way every bit as insistent as Stevie Wonder’s original. “Going Up-Going Down” is his woozy interpretation of Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What You Want Me to Do,” while “Purple Raindrops” rides organ lines as invincible as the most formidable Ray Charles. “Bye Bye Blackbird,” the finale, transforms the decimated loser of the Tin Pan Alley standard into something more like a bat out of hell. Here’s the most entertaining eight tracks and nearly 22 minutes of blues-based music likely to be released this year, and it should leave you longing for more. Hopefully, the 73-year-old Sam, Living Blues Magazine’s comeback artist of the year, will be able to provide it.

The reason Bullet is so often overlooked is that when the label was shut down in 1952 – Bulliet himself had been forced out by his partners three years earlier – the masters were destroyed. Or so it was always said. And because Bullet was thus left out of the initial reissue rampage when CDs replaced vinyl, the label grew obscure. Until now. Some of the tracks on the Bullet reissues that have become available are clearly taken off the original vinyl 78s, suggesting the masters were not available; but others sound so clean that they could easily come from the masters. Perhaps it’s enough to note that such albums as The Bullet Records Story: The First Americana Label, Bullet Records: Jump, Blues and Ballads, Bullet Records Blues and The Bullet and Sur-Speed Records Story now exist, and that’s what really matters.

Where there were recording studios there were blues and R&B scenes, and Nashville was no exception. Bullet also released B.B. King’s first four sides, early efforts by Guitar Slim (recording under his real name of Eddie Jones) before he made history with “The Things That I Used to Do” and by Wynonie Harris before he made his name as Mr. Blues, some first-rate Cecil Gant, and random sides by big names like Roosevelt Sykes and Willie Dixon’s Big Three Trio, cult figures like Rudy Greene and obscurities like the Red Miller Trio (whose 1948 “Bewildered” briefly reached No. 1 R&B).

The Gant material is especially noteworthy, since he was one of the most popular R&B pianists and singers in postwar America thanks to his original “I Wonder,” a massive 1946 hit for Gilt-Edge that he re-recorded in a more exotic-sounding version for Bullet. Sung from the point of view of a soldier overseas thinking dark thoughts of his girlfriend back home, it’s a dire, slow tune, not unlike one of Charles Brown’s heart-tugging cocktail blues, and it provided the template for his future hits. But the oft-ignored truth is that Cecil Gant was one breakneck boogie woogie pianist with more than a little stride mixed in, and uptempo romps like “Nashville Jumps” (an ode to his hometown’s drinking culture) are every bit as strong as his best ballads; so are the less frantic “Anna Mae” and “Boogie Woogie Baby.”

The B.B. King material shades more towards boogie than the subsequent hits (“Three O’Clock in the Morning”) that highlighted his early career; his voice here bears no resemblance to the pipes he would display just a few short years later, and he takes no guitar solos. But “When Your Baby Packs Up and Goes” and “Take a Swing with Me,” respectively walk and swing with real force and, as always, King knows how to assemble and lead a tight band. The two Wynonie Harris sides available are hardly poor, but certainly pale next to the exhilarating, barrel-chested jump sound he would later develop; perhaps the most interesting thing about them is the slightly unorthodox accompaniment from his pianist, one Sonny Blount, making his recording debut. Blount would soon move to Chicago, change his name to Sun Ra, and show fans what unorthodox could really mean while exploring outer space and beyond in his own music. As for rocking Rudy Greene, the only one of his five tracks here that even approaches the craziness that would win him his cult following is “Buzzard Pie,” and it’s a long long ways from “My Mumblin’ Baby” or “Juicy Fruit.”

Blues fans will find other small pleasures scattered across these compilations. Nashville homeboy St. Louis Jimmy’s version of his standard “Goin’ Down Slow” is a remake that doesn’t embarrass itself. Big Joe Williams is as prickly as ever on “Jivin’ Woman” and “She’s a Married Woman.” Memphis favorites Tuff Green and His Orchestra step out with the always-timely “Let’s Go to the Liquor Store.” The Big Three Trio, Willie Dixon’s first group, manages a non-risque version of “Signifying Monkey.” Max Bailey’s “Rockin’ the Blues” verges tantalizingly on rock ‘n’ roll. “Candy Man Blues” and “Why Should I Cry” are typically two-fisted piano blues from Roosevelt Sykes.

Bulliet’s original partners ultimately ran the label into the ground by signing pop stars like Milton Berle and Bob Crosby instead of exploiting the local omnipresence of country and blues/R&B. Bullet was briefly revived in the ’60s, along with the subsidiaries Sur and Speed, for about a dozen single releases (Shy Guy Douglas’s novel instrumentals “Midnight Soul” and “Shy” and the Burton Majors Band’s pop-soul “Cry, Cry” stand out). Jim Bullet kicked around a few more labels and other music companies – an early backer of Sun Records, he got out before the gettin’ at that breakout Memphis label got good – before winding up in…the candy business. His legacy is rather a modest one, but that’s okay; he was in the right place at the right time, and he delivered.

Because when you think about it, the slide style Landreth developed early in his career while fronting a rock trio or quartet is ideally suited to the layered music he now creates with a slightly expanded band and some surprisingly effective violin, viola and cello players from the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra. After playing in zydeco king Clifton Chenier’s rip-snorting Red Beans and Rice Revue in the ’70s, Landreth recorded a pair of albums for a small Louisianablues label in the early ’80s. He parlayed that into a pivotal role in John Hiatt’s band, spicing up Slow Turning (1988) and later Is Anybody There. His “official” debut came in 1992 with Outward Bound, a daring blend of commercial southern boogie, progressive slide blues and Louisiana sounds. By now he’d perfected his singular style of playing with the slide on his pinky finger, so that it glides above the fretboard and along the strings while behind it, his other fingers are fretting notes and playing chords. The fingers on his right hand, meanwhile, tap, slap and pick at the strings while his palm and the occasional free finger create a muting effect that emulates jazz trumpeters (which Landreth happens to have been as a schoolboy). It’s a shame, really, that Sonny Landreth doesn’t have more hands, because it’d be great fun to see what he did with them.

All of these techniques combine to give him a much broader palette of sounds to work with than most slide guitarists have, and makes his playing more percussive. Landreth can move back and forth between an overwhelming roar and a delicate fragility in the blink of an eye, especially live, as evidenced on the 2005 Grant Street. But his kaleidoscopic licks are perhaps even more impressive on The Road We’re On (2003). That one opens (“True Blue”) and closes (the delightfully loopy” Juke Box Mama”) with Landreth playing an acoustic resonator guitar that adds to the textures of the album’s other highlights — the funky “Hell at Home,” the confidently shuffling “All About You,” the slow, minor-key blues “A World Away” (on which he makes his ax sound almost like a pedal steel, then shimmers out on a heartbreaking slide lick), and the swooning “Fallin’ for You.” The album arguably represents Landreth’s most rough ‘n’ ready blues, a stunning blend of technique and passion. South of I-10 (1995) is only slightly less intense, perhaps because it is more deeply rooted in Louisiana motifs, with their built-in lilt.

That one also featured Mark Knopfler, and when Sonny debuted his own Landfill label with 2008′s From the Reach, he brought back Knopfler and added Eric Clapton, Robben Ford, Eric Johnson and other guests for particular tracks. He tailors each of his songs specifically to whichever guitarist sidekick it features, and gets the best out of all of them. There’s still enough Sonny Landreth in most tracks to pass muster, but it’s hard not to wish for a little more. Perhaps that’s why Elemental Journey works so well most of the time; say what you will about the strings and atmospherics, this is definitely a guitar album by a man who knows how to wrench all manner of sounds and emotions out of his ax. (He’s joined on one track by Joe Satriani and on another by Eric Johnson.) The opening “Gaia Tribe” is redolent of Bayou State swampiness though it bears nary a lick suggesting zydeco, Cajun or any other indigenous forms, and Satriani solos with a visceral ferocity that matches his prog-shredding technique. (Johnson, alas, doesn’t fare as well on “Passionola,” the surface beauty of his lines showing little staying power.) “Wonderide” is another with a distinct Louisiana feel, at least until it morphs something almost classical. On tracks like “Heavy Heart Rising,” “Wonderide,” “Letting Go,” “Elemental Journey” and “Forgotten Story” the melodies and guitar lines weave in and out conversationally. But on “Heavy Heart Rising,” that interplay is abrasive as well as ruminative; on “Reckless Beauty” they don’t converse so much as flat-out collide. And on “Forgotten Story” the conversation is between Landreth’s swooping, soaring guitar and Robert Greenridge’s steel drums and Steve Conn’s organ, resulting in sort of a Mississippi River meets Caribbean Sea soundscape that is absolutely exhilarating. Whatever you do, don’t let blues purism get in the way of letting you dig this wholly unanticipated album on its own terms.

File under: Literate but hardscrabble, southwestern singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

From: Okemah, Oklahoma

Personae: John Fullbright

At the ripe old age of 23, John Fullbright sounds to many like the most promising new singer-songwriter on the block. He hails from Woody Guthrie’s hometown, and because Live at the Blue Door, his barely-distributed 2009 debut, was cut with just his guitar (or piano) and rack harp, he was initially perceived as a folkie in that tradition. But he’d done that album quickly and with little planning only so he’d have a sample of his work to take to that year’s Folk Alliance Conference. On his new From the Ground Up, which is being promoted as more or less his “real” debut, the majority of tracks feature a full band (though his live shows remain mostly solo). However you hear him, Fullbright’s grandchild-of-the-Dust-Bowl sensibility, with just enough of a chip on its shoulder to keep things tense as well as compelling, continues to shine through. He began as a student of country-based writers, from Townes Van Zandt on down, but his most recent work suggests he has since absorbed Randy Newman and others across the pop spectrum. His music has also come to assimilate folk, country, blues and pop without any of those antecedents being easy to pin down; combine that with his rich Okie twang, which delivers his lyrics in a voice that ranges from tremulous softness to alley-cat yowl, and you have that rarest of species, an artist who sounds like nobody except himself. He’s already built a strong reputation in his region of the country, and if it doesn’t grow now that he’s touring more widely, something is definitely wrong.

On beginning to write songs:

I’d write kinda secretly when I was 14, 15. Musically I had a very lonely childhood; nobody in my family was involved with music at all; even in high school I was starving for someone to play with. I lived outside town, so I was the first picked up in the morning and the last dropped off the school bus every afternoon. I spent a lot of time sitting by myself, staring out the window, thinking. Then when I was 17, I got a mix CD of Steve Earle…Townes Van Zandt…and it got me thinking very seriously about writing. But I came at it backwards — those guys have great vocals and ideas but struggle with the instrumental part of it. I was the opposite; I could play pretty well by then, but couldn’t sing and didn’t think I had many ideas. Townes was the man. All writing fell short of what he did. I suffered by myself trying to write the perfect song right off the bat. I was quite the snob, and every songwriter was inferior to Townes, including me.

On writing now:

Lyrics are mostly me talking to me, but I want to write more attainable songs and not be vague. So much of it is hiding behind vagueness in order to be hip. I know what I’m talking about, but I want to write lyrics that make sense to everyone. I’ve told the truth the whole time, but the truth changes and I have to change with it. At 16, you’ve got everything figured out; it’s easy to write about being persecuted. But as you gain more life experience and see more complexities…

On adding a band:

I’d been avoiding it for a while, not because I didn’t want to, but because it just didn’t make sense at the time, especially financially. I’m not shy about what I want to hear from them; I’m very picky about what I want to hear. All I really care about is the energy: If you’re gonna do something, do the hell out of it.

On reading:

Jimmy Webb told me you have to read a lot to become a great writer, and I try to be a big reader. It’s hard nowadays, when you’ve got a laptop, a TV and a phone that plays movies. But I’ll still turn those off and just read, mostly poems and short stories. I like Bukowski about as much as anyone out there…Flannery O’Connor…Steinbeck.

On Woody Guthrie:

I knew his name early on ’cause it’s on the water tower. But nobody talked about him much in Okemah, so I never knew much about him; we never went to the WoodyFest they have every year, because the politics was so radically different. I’m still kinda trying to figure out my own politics. It’s easy to say he’s an entertainer but that’s far from all he was. I’m coming to learn he wasn’t just a communist, which is how they think of him in town; he had a real love for humanity. Really, I found out about him mostly through Dylan; that was the first thump on my head, my light bulb moment.

Ric & Ron Records was founded late in 1958 by New Orleans music-biz veteran Joe Ruffino, and folded shortly after his death at the end of 1962, though his brother-in-law continued releasing completed masters for another three years. The two labels, like local labels everywhere, were dependent on local talent. But inNew Orleans, “local talent” often has national impact. Ric and Ron took advantage of that to record several established artists, while also developing new talent. The music itself was a mixed bag; some followed traditional, 2-4 parade-beat motifs; jump blues was still in vogue; vocal groups, doo-wop and otherwise, were plentiful; white pop acts were tried; other sounds presaged soul and even funk. But Ruffino garnered just one national hit out of all of that: Joe Jones’s laconic “You Talk Too Much,” which peaked at No. 3 on the pop charts before Roulette, which had an earlier version of the song it had never released, snatched the singer back. Still, Ric and Ron were influential locally, while blazing a few new trails.

Guitarist Edgard Blanchard, who led a combo called the Gondoliers and had also been Roy Brown‘s bandleader, was the label’s first arranger (and, unofficially, producer). He used musicians who weren’t in the established studio group that backed singers on New Orleans records, and he changed the prevailing sound by having two guitarists playing harmonies, rather than one providing the bass line and the other the chords. He also released a couple singles, one under his name and one as the Gondoliers; the former featured the raunchy “Lonesome Guitar” backed with the more loungey “Let’s Get It.” But Eddie Bo, who also wrote and played piano on sessions, became the label’s primary producer/arranger. Bo, who’d first recorded in 1955, was also one of its key artists; though ultimately best known for his snazzy ’70s funk sides, he did some of his most rocking R&B for Ric. “Tell It Like It Is” (not the later Aaron Neville hit of the same title) sported an infectious parade beat, and its flip, “Every Dog Got His Day,” hints at the hard funk Bo would be churning up a decade later. “Ain’t It the Truth Now” (not the similarly-titled Ernie K-Doe hit) swings behind Eddie’s Ray Charles-like vocals, while “Check Mr. Popeye,” which exploits a popular NOLA dance, barely fell short of national charts. Bo also usually cut Tommy Ridgely, who’d been around since 1949 and had sung with Dave Bartholomew’s big band; he boasted a sly voice and deft phrasing, but on “Let’s Try & Talk It Over” is more of a blues belter.

Though Ridgely brought her to Ron, Irma Thomas‘s debut single was one of Bo’s greatest triumphs. When she was just 18, he cut her on “Don’t Mess with My Man,” a rather, shall we say, “worldly” song for one so young. But his stop-time piano and a screaming sax break booted the saucy soul-blues along, and Irma had no trouble handling the sassy lyric (“You can have my husband/ But please don’t mess with my man”). “Set Me Free,” the B-side ballad, was another harbinger of the brand of soul that would define Thomas’s subsequent career, but she had just one more single there before jumping to producer Allen Toussaint at Minit Records. Martha Carter (who also recorded under her maiden name Martha Nelson) was Ruffino’s only other notable female singer, a pop-R&B balladeer with a rich voice who was usually brought down by inferior material or distracting background singers. The same could be said for Johnny Adams, another fabulous singer who made his debut with Ric but went elsewhere to make his reputation. His strong, flexible voice was already there when he deserted gospel music to go under Bo’s wing, but he hadn’t yet developed his ad-lib abilities and he was shackled with insipid songs and arrangements. Still, occasional gems like “A Losing Battle” virtually define soul balladry in its infancy.

The rest of the catalog varies wildly. Guitarist Joe Morris and tenor men Robert Parker andJames Riverwailed infectious two-part instrumentals. Eddie Lang fronted a tough blues-rock band whose best record was “Easy Rockin’.” The Velvetiers’ “Feelin’ Right Saturday Night” is one of the few vocal group efforts that’s not an embarrassment. The Party Boys (probably formed spontaneously in the studio, for they made no other records) took the New Orleans tradition of novelty songs to new heights with “We Got a Party, Parts 1 & 2,” which starts out with the Boys chanting normally if boisterously and ends a few minutes later with them slurring their words; an obvious riff on “We Like Birdland,” it’s long been rumored to feature Huey “Piano” Smith. The label is also responsible for two of the finest carnival records. Al Johnson’s playful singing makes the buoyant “Carnival Time” perhaps the favorite theme song each year when Mardi Gras rolls around. And the Ric version of “Go to the Mardi Gras” wasn’t the first by Professor Longhair, but it’s the one that always gets played, and is arguably the only such single more popular than Johnson’s. If Ric had never released anything except those two anthems, its place in New Orleans musical history would be assured.

Born Leslie Johnson, Lester hit Crowley, Louisiana, where producer Jay Miller was cranking out definitive swamp blues for Nashville’s Excello label, in 1956. He made his name first as a multi-instrumentalist sideman to Lightnin’ Slim and then Lonesome Sundown, Slim Harpo (the rest of the Big Four) and others. But in his decade there, he also cut some 30 sides of his own, several of which are available at eMusic on various compilations; among the highlights, “Lester’s Stomp” is a prototypical instrumental, while “Sugar Coated Love” was revived by the Fabulous Thunderbirds. They define his easygoing, rural blues style, and his muddy groove. He has a nasal voice and plays a high-pitched harmonica to match; sometimes, his harp somehow borders on twangy. Critics have gone so far as to call his slurred vocals monotonous, but they couldn’t be more effective at shaping his simple, country-boy persona. His harmonica work is so casual it almost seems like an afterthought, yet it’s also as crisp and airy as a cool breeze. Lester’s sound was his alone; there’s no mistaking him for anybody else.

Despite this, he never enjoyed a hit. After leaving the label, he left the music business for nearly two decades. He wound up joining Lightnin’ Slim in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1975 to live with Slim Harpo’s sister. Then, in 1987, British producer and blues fanatic Mike Vernon got him into the studio to cut Lazy Lester Rides Again, a mix of old and new songs that came out much better than it probably should have considering how long Lester had been out of commission. The sidemen were not exactly the cream of the British blues crop — most came from either Blues ‘N’ Trouble or the Junkyard Angels — but they were especially effective on rockers like the Excello remakes “The Same Thing Could Happen to You” and “I Hear You Knockin’.” And Lester himself hadn’t lost a step, singing and blowing with gusto. He’s equally enthused on the 1988 Harp & Soul, though the backing band this time isn’t as simpatico and tends to overwhelm him. Lester didn’t record again until 1998 and 2001, when he cut a pair of spirited albums for Antone’s (he was a favorite at the Austin blues club that spawned the label). Since then, he’s recorded intermittently for tiny audiophile or foreign labels whose releases are virtually impossible to find, and appeared on compilations.

Until now. Today, 78-year-old Lazy Lester lives in Northern California, where he plays fairly often. You Better Listen draws material from all over — his own Excello tunes along with other swamp pop favorites (the hard groove of Lightnin’ Slim’s “Rooster Blues,” Slim Harpo’s randy “Scratch My Back”), an original instrumental, some blues favorites, even a droopy-lidded interpretation of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” Spoonful of Blues turns out to be an ideal backing band for him. Coming from the more garagey end of the modern blues spectrum, they’re as loose and raucous as Lester is. But they also have all the chops they need. “If You Don’t Want Me Baby” sounds slapdash, and constantly in danger of careening out of control, but it never does. “The Same Thing Will Happen to You” has a similar, first-take feel. Some tracks are swampier than others. The laconic title song is one of them, with Lester’s wailing vocals riding an irresistible groove that’s accessorized by uncharacteristic piano. But “Ethel Mae” and “Courtroom Blues” are both more conventional slow blues that rely on finesse. The slinky guitar on Lester’s version of “Scratch My Back” (he played on Harpo’s original) echoes the original without aping it, while “O.J. Shuffle” pulsates with nothing but guitar and harp plus some of the offbeat percussive effects Lester was famous for bringing to Miller’s Crowley studio back when. The album ends with another instrumental, named after Lester’s current hometown in California but conjuring up his Louisiana roots: “Paradise Stomp” is as seemingly anarchistic as “If You Don’t Want Me Baby,” with trash-can drums, and Lester’s driving harp getting strong support from a swinging zydeco accordionist named Runar Boyesen. What a team are Lazy Lester and these Norwegians.

Robey launched Peacock in 1947 to record Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, a blues guitarist-singer he’d been managing the last two years whose first few singles (for the Aladdin label) had bombed. Brown played a more hopped-up version of T-Bone Walker’s pioneering guitar style off against a sly vocal delivery, and his records usually boasted three or four funky horns as well. The 1949 “Mary Is Fine” b/w “My Time Is Expensive” was his only national hit, but regionally he was as popular (and as influential on future generations of Texasguitarists) as Walker. Many of his best sides are available on Essential Blues. Brown swung and stomped like nobody else, especially on rip-snorting instrumentals like “Okie Dokie Stomp.” And if he seemed most at home with carefree, horn-heavy rockers like “She Walks Right In,” he could also get lowdown with the lowdownest of ‘em on stuff like “Dirty Work at the Crossroads.”

In 1951 Robey signed an explosive Alabamasinger who’d been stranded in Houstonafter a tour fell apart. Her name was Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, and her rough, insistent voice was usually paired with Johnny Otis’s jumping L.A.band. This produced just one national hit but it was a big ‘un: “Hound Dog” topped the R&B charts for seven weeks in 1953 and was soon covered by Elvis Presley to become a rock ‘n’ roll standard. A humorous record without being a novelty song, it set the tone for efforts like “I Smell a Rat” and “Stop A-Hoppin’ on Me.” But Big Mama could deliver a melody as convincingly as she could a threat – even a good-natured one – and her versatility shines through on tracks like the rollicking “My Man Called Me,” the remorseless “Let Your Tears Fall Baby” and the scorching “Rocky a Bye Baby” (all from Hound Dog/The Peacock Recordings). These cast her less as a one-hit wonder than a bridge between classic blues singers like Bessie Smith and future rockers like Janis Joplin.

Robey signed Junior Parker, fresh off his hit “Feelin’ Good” and his non-hit “Mystery Train” (which was also covered by Elvis) away from Sun Records in 1953. Parker’s earliest Duke sides, such as “I Wanna Ramble,” weren’t all that different from the countrified boogie of his Sun sound. But Junior had joined Duke because with his sweet voice (invariably described as “honeyed”) he considered himself primarily a smooth singer. Soon, arranger Joe Scott was subordinating Junior’s melodic harmonica to punchy horn charts derived from modern big bands, and in 1957 Parker finally clicked with his deft treatment of “Next Time You See Me.” But he never fled his country-boy roots entirely. While with Duke, he fashioned a compromise that gave swankier treatments to earthy material like “Stand By Me,” “Strange Things Happening” and “The Things That I Used to Do.” He’s grown increasingly obscure, an acquired taste, over the years, but much of his Duke output appears on Next Time You See Me, Driving Wheel, Essential Blues Beat and scattered compilations.

Robey had entered into a partnership with Memphis-based David Mattis and Duke Records in 1952, but within a year had commandeered the label away from its founder. This brought him not only Bobby “Blue” Bland, but also Johnny Ace and others. Ace was a suave, but shy, balladeer whose foreboding voice seemed to have an echo built into it; his entire stance simply screamed “Vulnerable Male,” and women loved him from the instant they first heard hits like “My Song” and “The Clock,” which had a “tick…tick” sound throughout that made it haunting to the point of being morbid. When Ace killed himself playing with a gun backstage just before Christmas 1954 – the exact circumstances are mysterious to this day – Robey capitalized with a tear-jerking promo campaign that shot the posthumous “Pledging My Life” to No. 1 on the R&B charts for 10 weeks, as well as to No. 17 pop.

And it was another Memphis artist, sanctified soul singer O.V. Wright, who gave Robey his second-biggest seller after Bland. Wright had sung in the Robey-contracted gospel quartet the Sunset Travelers. So when he went secular with “That’s How Strong My Love Is” (promptly covered by Otis Redding and then the Rolling Stones) for another label in 1964, Robey quickly sued and won rights to the singer. With producer Willie Mitchell gracing him with a seminal version of what would become known as the ’70s Hi Sound, Wright polished such gems as the strikingly melodramatic “Eight Men, Four Women” (1967) and the anguished “A Nickel and a Nail” (1971). Along the way were pleading ballads like “You’re Gonna Make Me Cry” and “Motherless Child” as well as such soul struts as “I’d Rather Be Blind, Crippled and Crazy” and “Ace of Spades.” With his throbbing vibrato and piercing falsetto, Wright has since come to be regarded as one of the greatest deep soul singers. He made five albums for Robey’s Backbeat label; A Nickel and A Nail and Ace of Spades, surely the best of them, is on eMusic, while The Soul of O.V. Wright is a sampler that burns and smokes through 18 definitive sides. Don’t miss it.

Just as there will never again be a relationship in American music quite like that of Sumlin and Howlin’ Wolf. The two first met when a teenage Sumlin saw Wolf at an Arkansas juke joint; later, their paths crossed a few times while Sumlin was playing in a band with James Cotton in West Memphis while Wolf was also based there. When Wolf moved to Chicago in 1954, his entire band, including guitarist Willie Johnson, stayed behind. Wolf hired Jody Williams for the job right after arriving in the Windy City, but soon convinced Sumlin to come north and join up as second guitarist. At the time, the country boy was 23 years young, while Wolf was already 44. They had a classic father-son relationship, with all that implies. When Sumlin first reached town, Wolf made him take guitar lessons at the Chicago Conservatory of Music. Over their nearly quarter-century together, the two men punched each other out on occasion, and Wolf fired Sumlin, then hired him back, more times than either man could keep track of. Sumlin quit nearly as often (once to play for Wolf’s arch-rival Muddy Waters), then returned to the fold. Wolf asked Sumlin to turn down a little onstage and Hubert responded by playing so quietly the frontman couldn’t hear him at all.

But musically, they were happening from the beginning. Williams remained lead guitarist until quitting in 1955, when Wolf brought Willie Johnson up from Memphis because he felt Sumlin still wasn’t ready to take over. But even before 1960, when Sumlin did become the sole guitarist in the band, he threw off his fair share of sparks. On the 1954 song “I’ll Be Around,” Wolf sang so hard he blew out his mike, and the guitars of Williams and Sumlin played off each other with matching menace. Meanwhile, it was Sumlin’s stalking guitar, not Johnson’s, that made “Smokestack Lightnin’.” On a rare 1957 session on which he was the sole guitarist, Sumlin provided dark, Delta tinges to the likes of “Sittin’ on Top of the World” and “Walk to Camp Hall.” In mid 1960, Wolf cut the Willie Dixon triumvirat “Spoonful,” “Wang Dang Doodle” and “Back Door Man” back to back to back with Sumlin and Freddy Robinson on guitars providing a stirring blend of the Delta and the big city.

Sumlin’s breakthrough came in ’61, after Wolf had fired him mid-set in front of 500 fans and brought another guitarist onstage at a Chicago club. Humiliated and unable to sleep that night, Sumlin picked up his guitar and began playing with his fingers rather than a pick, which Wolf had long been urging him to do in an attempt to quiet him down. Sumlin found that this made his tone as deep as it already was rich, his harmonies fuller and his playing more percussive; it gave him more control over dynamics. The next night he talked his way back into the band long enough to show off his new style, and Wolf dug it and rehired him. The first time Sumlin used the technique in the studio, the result was “Shake for Me” and “Little Red Rooster,” and all blues people know what happened after that. For the rest of the decade, Sumlin was the perfect foil for Wolf’s thundering vocals. His solos were as angular and fiery as lightning, his fills stabbing and slicing like a knife. His guitar shimmied as he went up the strings in frenzied yelps, came back down like a bird seeking prey; his note-bending and vibrato had an almost physical impact. He’d play a solo that screamed and careened around like a wounded animal, then grind his way back into the ensemble like a cement mixer. There were the barnyard guitar sounds of “Tail Dragger,” the wink-and-grin of “Built for Comfort,” the hammering two-guitar riff (with Buddy Guy) that intro’d “Killing Floor,” and so many more. On “Hidden Charms,” Sumlin is all over the place before pushing insistently into a barbed and nimble solo that draws its strength from his sense of timing as much as his chops. Though many have romanticized the crudeness of Sumlin’s playing, the truth is that his one-chord vamps and single-string solos were more elemental than elementary. And live he was even more unrestrained: playing with his back to the audience (out of shyness and so others couldn’t steal his licks) he’d peel off a solo that was completely out of tune, out of time and out of this world, and it drove everyone in the house, including Wolf, completely out of their minds. Wolf stopped instructing his “sideman” how and when to play; musically, it was now as if they shared one mind, and Sumlin should probably have gotten co-writing credit for many of those songs.

While still with Wolf, Sumlin had recorded a little bit overseas under his own name (the centerless My Guitar and Me dates to 1975), but he didn’t begin releasing albums in America until the 1987 album Hubert Sumlin’s Blues Party, a generic-sounding effort on which Mighty Sam McClain took most vocals. Succeeding solo albums continued to display mainly his natural reticence to step out until 1998, when he released I Know You and Wake Up Call. On the former, backed by Chicago vets like Sam Lay on drums and Carey Bell on harmonica, his guitar work is both finessed and abrasive, and he reworks some Wolf classics with real fire; the two long, slow-blues jams, “That’s Why I’m Gonna Leave You” and “I’ve Been Hurt,” go by quickly, so focused and resourceful is his playing. That carries over to the latter set, where he’s backed unobtrusively by the Jimmy Vivino Band and no less than six of the 10 tunes exceed six minutes in length, with Sumlin flashing some skronky new licks on “Makes Me Think About the One I Had” and “Hubert Runs the Voodoo Down.” On both, Sumlin finally figures out how to make the most of his admittedly-limited voice.

But he only sings one song on his final, and best, solo album. About Them Shoes was recorded in 2000 and 2001, but not released until early 2005. (Hubert was diagnosed with cancer in 2002.) It features Sumlin with Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Levon Helm, Paul Oscher, James Cotton and others. The song Sumlin sings, his own “This Is the End, Little Girl,” is the only one not written by or associated with Muddy Waters; backed only by stand-up bass, Hubert and Keith intertwine their two acoustic guitars like they share one mind. Their take on “Still a Fool” (with Keith singing ferociously) is moody and full of sharp edges. Clapton outdoes himself on “I’m Ready” and “Long-Distance Call,” playing much harder blues than he does on his own. Oscher’s savage harp plays off Sumlin’s shimmering guitar on “Come Home Baby.” At a time when so-called blues is rarely anywhere near its sources, this is a set of uncompromising blues – incisive, immediate, passionate and brimming with hard-earned wisdom. That’s exactly how Hubert Sumlin deserves to be remembered.

Among his most heartbreaking songs

“Sing Me Back Home” still ranks among Haggard’s most heartbreaking songs; it’s also, despite its surface simplicity, one of his most complex of the ’60s. The growing depth of his writing — and his singing — is equally apparent on “Look Over Me” and “My Past Is Present,” while his choices of outside material, from the brilliant “If You See My Baby” to the gothic “Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp,” are acute. The bluegrassy “Legend of Bonnie and Clyde,” inspired by the Faye Dunaway-Warren Beatty movie, represents the increasing folk flavors of his work, while that single’s B-side ballad, “I Started Loving You Again,” has become one of his signature songs though it’s never been a hit. That album’s filled out mostly by outside material, but the choices here are more unlikely, and their relative obscurity reinforces the notion of Haggard as archivist.

The best of his box sets

It’s so easy to take an artist like B.B. King for granted, especially this late in his career, when his timing, dexterity and vocal chops aren’t what they used to be. Most box sets confuse “best of” with “greatest hits,” but of the multi-disk packages available, this one is the best, even though it’s still vulnerable to criticism. Older listeners would doubtless like even more tracks from his RPM/Kent years, for example, and fewer from the ’80s. But then, this box does include a healthy sampling from the ’50s and early ’60s that, at the time of this release had never appeared anywhere before (though many have since been issued elsewhere). In all, there are some 30 tracks here that were new at the time — a handful still appear nowhere else — and there’s still room for the hits and assorted other gems. Arranged chronologically from 1949-91, they document an astonishing career — one that never stopped evolving even as it stayed within strictly-defined parameters. That’s the thing about King that can’t be over-emphasized: His singular style was there in embryonic form from the beginning, and was fully realized within a few years of his first hit. He’s dedicated the rest of his life to exploring every possible nuance, no matter how subtle, of that style. In doing so, he’s leaving behind an unmatched — and instantly identifiable — body of work.