ANA POPOVIC Source: Blues Lounge Date: 09/2007 Writer: Bruce Sylvester

            Meanwhile, Tharpe's 1940s singing partner Marie Knight returns to the studio for Let Us Get Together: A Tribute to Reverend Gary Davis (MC) with producer Larry Campbell (Bob Dylan's ex-sideman) masterfully capturing the spirit of Davis's cheery Piedmont blues guitar style.  A Harlem preacher like Davis was, octogenarian Knight holds her own reasonably well as a gutsy vocalist.   Cambell's thorough notes explain, "Piedmont blues is all  about imitating ragtime piano playing with the thumb imitating [the pianist's] left hand and the fingers the right hand."

            As for a much younger generation,  Ana Popovic's confident  Still Making History (Electro Groove) boasts her '70s-style blues-rock power licks, with "Hungry" shifting to  a jazzy chanteuse approach.  A native of war-torn Serbia, she occasionally shows as a writer how the blues can be the expression of outsiders of any denomination.  But mostly she just plain rocks.

            Turning to a reissue, Just Like A Woman: Nina Simone Sings Classic Songs Of the '60s (RCA/Legacy) fuses jazz, blues and art song in Simone's inimitable earthy yet sophisticated style.   Backing her must have required intuition as she paid little heed to beat and melody on the likes of "Here Comes The Sun," "Suzanne" and "I Shall Be Released."

            Of course, gentlemen too sing the blues.

            It's safe to assume that a band named The Mannish Boys (note the Muddy Waters reference) revives classic Chicago blues.  The West Coast troupe does this  with rustic aplomb and verve on Big Plans (Delta Groove).  A few long-ago Chess Records sidemen lend a hand as the nine Mannish Boys adroitly interweave  their own originals with bygone   bluesmen's somewhat obscure songs (Howlin' Wolf's "California Blues").  Big Plans nears the spirit of a '60s South Side joint.
            Moving uptown,  115-minute, two-CD Duke Robillard's World Full Of Blues (Stony Plain) is a good-time travelogue across the blues spectrum with his own songs plus some by T-Bone Walker, Memphis Slim, Buddy Johnson and Jimmy Reed, not to mention Bob Dylan and Tom Waits.  For light humor, Roomful of Blues founder Robillard's "Six Inch Heels" pays discreet tribute to film legend Bettie Page, while "Too Much Stuff" (from Eric Bibb) addresses acquisitiveness.   A deep-voiced cover of Bo Diddley's arch "Who Do You Love" gets the comic spookiness it deserves.

            Chris Whitley didn't know he had but seven months left when, in April 2005, he taped mainly acoustic Dislocation Blues (Rounder) with Australian lap guitarist/producer Jeff Lang.  They made a perfect match.  A ghostly aura often marked  Whitley's music, but here it's easy to wonder if the unrecognized spectre of death contributed to his eerie National guitar work (with occasional African tinges).   On the atmospheric voice/percussion opener, folk music's archetypal killer "Stagger Lee" could be a metaphor for Whitley's undiagnosed lung cancer.   Along with two Dylan covers, we find the duo's own compositions plus, within the hidden bonus track, Robert Johnson's "Hellhound On My Trail."

            Shout! Family Records continues its worthy John Lee Hooker reissue marathon with 1986's Jealous (which ended his seven-year recording hiatus) and his final complete studio effort, 1997's Don't Look Back--each with two bonus tracks.  By '97, the 80-year-old Boogie Man sang like aged whiskey but left the guitar work to producer Van Morrison.  Los Lobos helped him revisit "Dimples."  Recorded mainly with his touring band, Jealous had a title track that showed disco couldn't pull Hooker down.  The CDnow ends with a sparse, heart-breaking "Decoration Day" duet with Roy Rogers.

            Finally, for an excellent blues sampler, check the concisely annotated, mostly 1940s-'60s  Blues Gold (Essential Music Group).   The two CDs'  36 songs balance the famous (Leadbelly, Albert King, Lightning Hopkins) with less known worthies (Emmet Davis, Hattie Green).