Homesick for the Road provides a showcase for three fine blues singer/guitarists. The recording is clean and crisp, as is typical of the Telarc label, and the music cooks from start to finish. This disc provides an excellent introduction to each performer, with ample opportunities for each to shine. Debbie Davies brings to mind Bonnie Raitt, with her appealing vocal timbre and bluesy delivery. The youthful Benoit sings with an authority beyond his 31 years, making Screamin' Jay Hawkins' classic "I Put a Spell on You" his own. Kenny Neal has the scruffy, soulful delivery of a man who knows what the blues are all about. His "I've Been Mistreated" sounds like a late '60s slice of Muscle Shoals soul. All three of the co-leaders are excellent guitarists, and the band is solid and tight. Homesick for the Road rolls down the car window for an enticing look at three relatively young performers carrying the blues torch into the future.

It's always sad when, for whatever reason, a worthwhile recording goes unreleased for a long time - and that's exactly what happened with Pepper's Hangout. On March 29, 1977, a 48-year-old Jimmy Johnson entered a Chicago studio and recorded what was meant to be his first studio LP as a leader. The LP had a working title of "Chicago Roots," and Living Blues editor Jim O'Neal was hired to write the liner notes. But regrettably, an album that should have come out in 1977 wasn't released in the U.S. until 2000, when Delmark was finally able to release the session as Pepper's Hangout. Better late than never - this CD finds Johnson in fine form and makes one wish that the singer/guitarist hadn't waited until his late 40s to record some albums…

Although it kicks off with the first (and only) song John Hammond has ever written, Ready for Love is a worthy and unusually varied follow-up to the surprise success of 2001's Wicked Grin. It would have been easy and possibly expected for Hammond to churn out another album of Tom Waits songs to capitalize on the unanticipated momentum created by Wicked Grin. After all, at age 60, considering he's been chipping away at his craft for the past 40 years, Hammond has certainly earned the right to coast on some better-late-than-never success. And the Waits catalog is bursting with plenty more gems perfect for the singer/guitarist to wrap his throaty, emotional blues voice around.

There's no mistaking Tony Joe White's signature swamp boogie. Patented in the late '60s, White has been working that same low-down blues grind ever since, taking a long sojourn from recording in the '80s before settling into a regular groove sometime around the time of the new millennium. Usually, these collections of new songs were on tiny labels – including his aptly named Swamp imprint – but 2013's Hoodoo appeared on Yep Roc and received an appropriately larger push than its recent predecessors.

Cant Take It is the second Delmark release from Chicago blues guitarist James Wheeler. Backed by pianist Ken Saydak, guitarist Billy Flynn (heard on the right channel), bassist Bob Stroger, drummer Marty Binder, and harp player Ron Sorin taking the place of James brother Golden Big Wheeler on this session. Wheeler's guitar playing is consistently flashy through this set, while other bright moments include Flynn's twangy solo on the dirty blues "You Make It Hard Baby" and Saydak's funky organ playing on the lazy shuffle "Goin to the Station." Wheeler isn't the strongest vocalist around but he gets his message across on tracks like "This Can't Be Happening to Me," "My Baby's Gone," and "I Can't Take It."

Having long ago established herself among the royalty of modern blues, Queen Etta seems rather content to sit back on her throne and her laurels and coast through a collection of classic and contemporary compositions. Unfortunately, her descendant band appears equally happy to sit back with her instead of working to shoot up the standards with another round of youthful vitality. The album opens with a rendition of Bob Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody" which serves more as a sleepy suggestion than a blues-injected imperative. While Al Green's "Rhymes" sounds very much like the Reverend, Etta's version of "Try a Little Tenderness" does phrase the slow dance in some subtly new directions.

A much more polished set than its predecessor, Midnight Son is a particularly effective effort with several numbers that remained in Son Seals on-stage repertoire for quite some time – "Telephone Angel," "On My Knees," the jumping "Four Full Seasons of Love." The addition of a brisk horn section enhanced his staccato guitar attack and uncompromising vocals, rendering this his best set to date.

So Many Roads is Hammond's most notable mid-'60s Vanguard album, due not so much to Hammond's own singing and playing (though he's up to the task) as the yet-to-be-famous backing musicians. Three future members of the Band – Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, and Levon Helm – are among the supporting cast, along with Charlie Musselwhite on harmonica, and Mike Bloomfield also contributes. It's one of the first fully realized blues-rock albums, although it's not in the same league as the best efforts of the era by the likes of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band or John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. In part that's because the repertoire is so heavy on familiar Chicago blues classics by the likes of Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, and Muddy Waters; in part that's because the interpretations are so reverent and close to the originals in arrangement; and in part it's also because Hammond's blues vocals were only okay.

Robillard, ex-Fab Thunderbird and founder of Roomful of Blues, hits a cool-rockin' groove on the opening, "Midnite Cannonball", and rides it with style, chops and hot horn riffs through the closing 11-minute jam on the late Albert Collins', "Dyin' Flu". A fine mix of originals and classics.

After years of being a team player, Steve Cropper got to make a solo album for the label he helped put on the map, Stax Records (actually their Volt subsidiary). As you might figure, it turned out as an instrumental soul album, and a darn good one, too. It's a bona fide Telecaster-soaked dance workout, with Cropper turning in signature versions of "Land of a Thousand Dances," "99 1/2," (which features a particularly nasty period fuzz guitar), "Funky Broadway," "Boo-Ga-Loo Down Broadway," "In the Midnight Hour," and original instrumentals like "Crop Dustin'" and the closer "Rattlesnake." A solid and soulful little side project that holds up quite well years later.