Joe Louis Walker Blue Soul

Another winner sporting memorable songs ("T.L.C.," "Personal Baby," "City of Angels," "Prove Your Love"), sinuous grooves, and a whole lot of vicious guitar from one of the hottest relatively young bluesmen on the circuit. He goes it alone on the finale, "I'll Get to Heaven on My Own," sounding as conversant with the country blues tradition as he does with the contemporary stuff.

More from Joe Louis Walker's searing Slim's engagement, Live at Slim's, Vol. 2 includes Joe Louis ripping through Ray Charles' "Don't You Know," and Little Milton's "Love at First Sight," and Rosco Gordon's overworked "Just a Little Bit," along with his own gems. Huey Lewis turns up again as the harpist on Walker's version of Haskell Sadler's "747."

Emotionally connected with gospel and soul as well as blues, Joe Louis Walker injects his confident singing and sophisticated, lyrical guitar-playing into an appealing program of eight originals and a song apiece from R&B great Ike Turner ("You've Got to Lose"), world-famous R&B scribe Dan Penn (with songwriting help from fellow Nashville resident Gary Nicholson on the title cut), and his dependable Bosstalkers band ("Second Street"). For certain, Walker's individual way with a song is memorable, inviting return listens. Special guests this time around include bass great Steve Cropper, who helped Walker produce the record; the ever-busy Memphis Horns; and, not least, the church singers The Spiritual Corinthians.

Forty Below Records releases Weight of the World, the new album by award-winning Blues and Roots musician Joe Louis Walker. A Blues Hall of Fame inductee and six-time Blues Music Award winner, NPR described Walker as "a legendary boundary-pushing icon of modern blues." His 2015 release, Everyone Wants a Piece, was nominated for the Contemporary Blues Grammy. In addition, Walker dueted with B.B. King on his Grammy Award-winning Blues Summit album and played guitar on James Cotton's Grammy-winning album Deep in the Blues.

Joe Louis Walker is one of the most interesting guitarists on the contemporary blues scene, not to mention one of the most prolific; 2015's Everybody Wants a Piece is Walker's 25th album since he made his debut with 1986's Cold Is the Night, and it hardly sounds like the work of someone padding his résumé. Walker is a player who keeps his music lively by mixing up the formula, folding plenty of rock, R&B, and Latin influences into his work instead of laying out the typical 12-bar figures all over again, and Everybody Wants a Piece finds him shaking it up with impressive results, especially on the wah-wah-fortified and rocked-up cover of "Witchcraft," a slinky interpretation of "Wade in the Water" that mixes up gospel and funk influences, the rollicking boogie-woogie of "Buzz on You," and the slide guitar shuffle of "35 Years Old"…