Elvin Bishop & Charlie Musselwhite

★★★★ 100 Years Of Blues ALLIGATOR. CD/DL

Two old friends celebrate a century of entwined tradition and innovation.

THIS IS an album by and for senior citizens of Bluesville. Joe Bonamassa fans probably will not care for it. These blues are Old School (one of the songs), Blues For Yesterday (another), the mood reminiscent, the past flavouring the music like cigar smoke in an old clubroom. Sonny Boy Williamson, Leroy Carr and Roosevelt Sykes are namechecked; the two principals – Birds Of A Feather (another song) – join the lineage of exquisite harmonicaguitar duets like Muddy Waters and Little Walter, or Johnny Shines and Shakey Horton. In Good Times, Elvin Bishop (above right) slices the air with slide-guitar playing in the spirit of Earl Hooker as Charlie Musselwhite (above left) asks, “Where did all our good times go?” They went, surely, into being able to make music like this: mature, masterly, endlessly rewarding.