“Mark Lemhouse came to Memphis and Lord knows what he had in mind …” begins the inner sleeve narrative on this CD. That would be a good opening line for a “Stagger Lee” kind of folk blues song, too, and that’s the kind of song with which Lemhouse starts. The dozen songs here, including four Lemhouse originals and one Tom Waits cut, are done with pre-WWII instrumentation and style and a subtle, modern recording technique that’s consistently right on the edge of electric crackle. He’s found that moment in American music when Sam Phillips stuffed a piece of damp newspaper into the guitarist’s cracked amp speaker cone in order to get on with the recording of Rockett 88” back in ’51, accidentally inventing fuzz tone in the process.

While too white, too light and too schooled for detailed parallel, Lemhouse also evokes the spirit of Howlin’ Wolf by taking those simplest rhythms and energetically hammering on them until the listener sways in a trance. This act should be welcome on any bandstand and in any blues record collection. Well, purists might object to the modern recording and pigment things, so let’s say “99.95% of blues record collections.”