Swaggering 83-year old Big Joe Duskin gets his due with this delightful Yellow Dog release. Only his second studio outing for a U.S. label, it's an all Queen City of the West affair with accompaniment by the local King Record's all-star rhythm section (drummer Phillip Paul and bassist Ed Conley) and recent Cincinnatian, British guitar master Peter Frampton, chiming in on a couple of standards.

Duskin credits boogie-woogie pioneers Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson as influences on his energetic key-pounding approach. He's also fond of Roosevelt Sykes and Memphis Slim, covering two songs apiece by each. His big, soulfully smoky voice and assertive piano are also lent to classics by Lowell Fulson (an arresting two-part "You're Gonna Miss Me"), Lucille Bogan (the infectiuos "Sloppy Drunk Blues") and Memphis Minnie (imbuing " One Dirty Rat" with a salacious Ray Charles rhythm) as well.

A couple of other performers with Cincinnati roots, National steel guitarist
William Lee Ellis (on a resonating take of "Betty and Dupree") and rising singer Shawna Snyder, with her gutbucket version of Bessie Smith's colorful "Black Mountain Blues," also join Duskin's comeback party. An easy-rolling, ruminative original "Mean and Strange and a brief, end-of-the-session boogie beat cover of "North to Alaska" add to the merriment.

The Story goes that Duskin's hard-core Baptist preacher father made him promise as a teenager not to play "the Devil's music" until he died. He then lived to 105. Here's hoping the last of Cincinnati's original bluesmen does the same.