Big Bill Broonzy was viewed as a beloved country blues player when he died in 1958, a master of raw and authentic-sounding folk-blues. But this public image, although Broonzy worked hard to maintain it in his later years, does him a bit of a disservice. He was much more than a rustic relic, however well he played the part. Broonzy was an excellent and even sophisticated guitarist, starting out in the '30s as a rag and hokum player but he was versatile enough to work with jazz and R&B combos, and his guitar approach was instrumental in the early formation of the Chicago blues sound. He was also a crafty songwriter, who managed to write blues pieces that bridged the line between traditional blues themes and modern structure. This 21-track collection focuses mostly on his early solo acoustic material, although there are some band pieces included as well toward the end of the sequence.

Five CD set containing a quintet of albums from the '60s Pop/Rock legends led by John Sebastian. Includes the albums Do You Believe in Magic, Daydream, Hums of The Lovin' Spoonful, Everything Playing and Revelation: Revolution '69.

Ray Bonneville combines electric blues motifs, a light sense of humor, and a pop approach to song-making. On pieces like the opening "Don't Look Back," with electric piano from Richard Bell, this combination comes across as a sort of Memphis Randy Newman. Colin Linden here produces this unique, memorable Canadian songwriter on his third album. Linden provides slide, baritone, and other guitar work on the album. Like Linden, Bonneville is adept at incorporating blues styles into accessible pop gems. Recorded in Canada and Nashville, this album features mandolin maestro Tim O'Brien on "Canary Yellow Car" and the Band's Rick Bell playing keyboards on five selections. Like the album, Bonneville is a constantly moving dual citizen of Canada and the United States. This broad base of experience reflects in an album featuring North American themes of pop, rock, and blues.

Guy Davis has developed into a consummate bluesman. He's listened hard to classic Delta blues and based his style on it, without ever becoming a carbon copy of the greats. Instead they're his jumping-off point into something as individual as "Layla, Layla," where didgeridoo makes an appearance, or the poignant "Joppatowne." Equally adept on guitar, banjo, and harmonica, he's become a force of nature, with the ability to write a song like "I Don't Know" that sounds as if it had come directly from the '30s, alongside covers of Fred McDowell, Big Bill Broonzy, and Sleepy John Estes. The originals and older work mesh perfectly, the sign of a real bluesman. And, of course, he's capable of working the other side of the coin to blues, in gospel, as the closer, "God's Unchanging Hand," clearly shows. This is the tradition reborn and revitalized. Davis' support is wonderfully sympathetic, but he's completely at the center of things, the motivator and mover of this music, and a purveyor of the real blues. His lineage is obvious, and he's the new generation, doing it right and keeping it real.

Guy Davis continues to explore the almost forgotten territory of acoustic African-American folk music, field hollers, shouts, rags, and gospel songs in a style that predates the blues and has much in common with the white Appalachian music that existed until the record companies separated it into race and hillbilly music. "Slow Motion Daddy" is a salacious ragtime original with a syncopated rhythm that recalls Rev. Gary Davis and Willie McTell. Davis plays banjo and harmonica and hams it up giving the performance a sly humor. "Follow Me Down" is a 12-string guitar showcase that pays homage to Leadbelly's "Mr. Tom Hughes' Town" a tale of racism and high life in the big city. Nerak Patterson adds electric guitar to a cover of "Hoochie Coochie Man" in an arrangement that crosses the Delta with South Side Chi town. Davis delivers the tune with a growling sexuality and leaves Patterson room for a tasty solo. "Can't Be Satisfied" is another Muddy Waters' tune, this time played claw hammer style on the banjo, with Davis adding harmonica and delivering another playful vocal.

A blues purist, John Hammond came to prominence in the mid-'60s and recorded for the prestigious Vanguard label, earning himself the title of "the white Robert Johnson" with his authentic National Steel guitar, voice, and harmonica blues. Highly praised in the blues and folk worlds, Hammond led a career spanning four decades with outstanding dedication to the purity of the blues. The Band served as rhythm section on some of his albums, but solo is arguably the best way to hear him - with no discredit to Robbie Robertson and company. It's just that Hammond is that kind of artist. Footwork was recorded in isolation by Hammond alone in 1978…

Lucinda Williams is incapable of sounding anything less than 100-percent engaged and sincere. Whatever she has to say, she clearly means it, and that more than anything else is the thread that runs through 2020's Good Souls Better Angels, her fourth album since she launched her own record label and took full control of her process of recording and releasing music. Cut mostly live in the studio with her road band – Stuart Mathis on guitar, David Sutton on bass, and Butch Norton on drums – these 12 songs play like a long stream-of consciousness journey, with Williams writing in blues structures that repeat certain lines like a mantra while her band either sneak up on the music like a ghost or howl with elemental, bluesy skronk (the raw, gritty tone of Mathis' guitar matches Williams' vocals for sheer ferocity on numbers like "Down Past the Bottom," "Bone of Contention," and "Wakin' Up" like he's roots rock's answer to Ron Asheton).

This album, originally released in 1980, perfectly captures both the searing electric and raw acoustic blues stylings of the legendary John Hammond. His close-to-the-bone vocals, masterful fingerstyle and slide guitar, and piercing harmonica keep the flame alive on this collection of blues roots classics by Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Robert Johnson.

Sinuous rhythms, conversational singing, and, most of all, intricate, bluesy guitar playing characterize Cale's performances of his own songs. This compilation, covering 11 years of recording, includes the songs Eric Clapton, who borrowed heavily from Cale's style in his 1970s solo work, made famous: "After Midnight" and "Cocaine."

Broke, Black & Blue delivers multiple surprises within its 100 songs of prewar blues. Arranged chronologically by Joop Visser, the set admirably covers the first 22 years of recorded blues, 1924 to 1946, from vaudeville and Delta to boogie-woogie and jump blues. It's a swell gift for anyone wanting to learn more about the history of blues. But old-timers will be pleased, too, as special attention has been paid to culling rare and idiosyncratic tracks by the well-known and the obscure. The first three discs present single tracks by artists as diverse as the Memphis Jug Band, De Ford Bailey, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Skip James, Peetie Wheatstraw, Lonnie Johnson, and Bukka White, alongside unknowns such as Isaiah "The Mississippi Moaner" Nelson, Barbecue Bob and Laughing Charley, Ed Andrews, Chicken Wilson, and Bumble Bee Slim. On the fourth disc, this convention is jettisoned to luxuriate in a series of very rare sides of lovely, oddly subdued boogie-woogie and jump blues by Jimmie Gordon, Johnny Temple, and Lee Brown.

David Bromberg basically gave up his recording and performing career at the start of the 1980s, but in 1986 his old label, Fantasy Records, released this album of odds and ends recorded between 1976 and 1979. Since odds and ends are what Bromberg specialized in, the result was as good as any of his albums, beginning with a paean to marijuana ("The Viper"), followed by one to drinking and sex ("Loaded and Laid"). Those jazzy live tracks typically were followed by studio recordings of meticulously played acoustic ballads before Bromberg and his band returned to San Francisco's Great American Music Hall for concert staples like "Suffer to Sing the Blues" and "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor." It was enough to make you wish he'd perform a little more often.