Johnny Farmer - Wrong Doers Respect Me (1998)

With only his voice and an electric guitar, this 66-year-old Holly Ridge, Miss., native renames and rewrites a dozen old standards (among the fragments zooming by are "Step It Up and Go" and "It Hurts Me Too") in his creaky, jittery style. It's raw stuff, capturing the intensity of Howlin' Wolf records like "Little Red Rooster" but barely stopping to acknowledge the melodies. An exception is "Trouble Me," in which Farmer's endearing slur provides the catchy complement to the staccato bursts from his fingers. Bluesmen haven't made great records like this -- where a song doesn't so much end as trail off into the singer's mumbling aside--since the '60s, when legends like Son House, Skip James and Lightnin' Hopkins were coaxed back into recording studios. ~Steve Knopper