A great sounding new studio album from Memphis blues and jazz guitar legend Calvin Newborn. Mostly originals, these are songs Newborn wrote after a lifetime in music - backing bluesmen such as B.B. King (on his initial Bullet session), Ike Turner and Howlin' Wolf as well as opening for Count Basie and Lionel Hampton and playing weekly residences at the infamous Plantation in West Memphis, Arkansas. In 1955 Newborn moved to New York, eventually joining bands led by Jimmy Forest and Wild Bill Davis as well as adding swinging guitar to countless sessions with the likes of Roy Milton, Ray Charles and Charlie Mingus.

'When Kingdom Comes' has a gospel-dynamic, dancing feel to it with bracing trumpet work by Scott Thompson (who still tours with Al Green and Bobby Blue Bland) and a high-wire flute solo from Herman Green (who played the tenor sax wail on Rufus Thomas's 'Bearcat' platter) while Newborn takes charge on the loping 'Streetwalker's Stroll', urged on by the soulfully churning B-3 organ of Charlie Wood (who has had stints with both Albert and B.B. King) and digs even deeper on his late brother Phineas's bristling, stratospheric 'Newborn Blues', playing above Woods' melismatic B-3 voicings with clear-toned picking and ringing, singing notes.

'Spirit Trane' showcases Memphis pianist Donald Brown on another tempo-shifting Newborn jazz original (great ricocheting drumwork by master percussionist Renardo Ward) and segues nicely into the set's only other cover - an ultra-melodic, meditative turn on Billy Strayhorn's classic 'Lush Life' with only Brown's drifting piano accompanying Newborn - who offers a master lesson in the use of hesitation and space. This is followed by the uplifting 'Restorations' where he explores various emotional tonalities with particularly expressive phrasings.

An extended 'After Hours Blues' picks up where 'Newborn Blues' left off as Calvin evokes both T-Bone and B.B. with his alternately lulling and crescendoing fretwork abetted by Woods' smoky organ flourishes. The closing 'Blues and Beyond' finds Newborn in a more Oscar Moore/Freddie Green kind of understated jazz/r&b groove with finger-popping piano and brass support.

At 72 and in good health, Newborn is overdue for a comeback. He's now writing a book about his friendship with a teenaged Elvis Presley and working on a documentary film project, entitled 'Triumph Over Chaos', dealing with the Newborn family's musical legacy - his drummer father, Finas, worked with Jimmie Lunceford's Chicksaw Syncopators, performing at the Palace Theater's famed Midnight Rambles on Beale Street. More fluid blues and blues-informed jazz guitar would be hard to imagine. Straight out of Memphis.