posted 02-17-2002 01:16 AM               

Ever since O Brother, Where Art Thou, the phrase “roots music” has been thrown around enough to warrant a good bout with nausea every time someone mentions it, and some of us are at the point where we’d rather have a bout with syphilis than listen to another heartfelt discussion of the important contributions of Appalachian bluegrass and Mississippi Delta Blues on public radio.

Then we see Luther Allison looking up at us from the CD rack, and we remember what the big deal is.

Allison’s 1992 release Hand Me Down My Moonshine is recorded acoustically, as opposed to the electric Chicago blues which comprises most of his body of work. There’s nothing more electric on this disc than a steel guitar.

In an era where digital technology has all but eliminated the possibility of a bad record, it’s easy to pine for the scratches and over-the-phone qualities of recordings made before quality was an issue that recording media could address. Sometimes it’s pleasingly quaint to hear the remnants of a wax cylinder in a Bessie Smith song, or whatever made Woody Guthrie sound as if he were standing three or four rooms down from a microphone. While most of Moonshine was recorded on digital audio tape – the two grittiest songs were recorded at studios near Allison’s home in France – Allison’s voice brings back that found-in-the-back-of-the-Library-of-Congress feeling that makes those old recordings so endearing. His pipes hit their apex in the title track (one of the two recorded in Paris), swerving between church-balcony highs and dirt-floor lows.

Allison’s voice overshadows most of his guitar work, which again in the title track reaches complexities hard to describe to someone who isn’t a blues fan. French bluesman Patrick Verbekes plays steel guitar ably on “You’re the One,” a classic blues conceit, and Allison’s own son Bernard screams on slide guitar in the disc’s final track, “Meet Me In My Hometown.”

Other tunes stand out, like “Farmer’s Child,” an ode to – and lament of – Allison’s rural upbringing and family history, and the infinitely sexy “Don’t Burn My Bread,” which – no offense to Chris Isaak – should have been used in that dirty scene in Eyes Wide Shut.