JAMES COTTON Baby, Don't You Tear My Clothes Telarc 83596

An enduring blues beacon, Cotton's third project for Telarc is a guest star studded affair as musicians like Odetta, Marcia Ball, Jim Lauderdale and Rory Block lend his endlessly inventive, burrowing yet resilient harmonica playing a hearty helping hand. Favorites include Odetta's rich, multi-hued reading of the classic "Key to the Highway," C.J. Chenier's easy drifting vocal and zydeco accordion fills on Slim Harpo's "Rainin' in My Heart" and a rowdy, yodel loaded "Muleskinner Blues," with Peter Rowan all over the place and Cotton swooping and swirling in running commentary.

A panoramic "Mississippi Blues," with Block's gorgeously inflected vocal and slide guitar work as well as the jaunty title track, with Bobby Rush's salty, soulful singing further accent Cotton's genre spanning approach to the blues. He proves as comfortable and enlightening in a chitlin" circuit groove as he is working with Dave Alvin on the jug band chestnut "Stealin,' Stealin'" or Doc Watson on Leroy Carr's seminal "How Long Blues."

A trio of self-penned instrumentals let Cotton take center stage. A "Down By the Riverside" sounding "Coach's Better Days" and a burnished "Blues for Jacklyn" are rather brief. The Delta deep and lonely "Friends," with only the fearlessly textured guitar of Derek O'Brien for accompaniment, is a thrilling coda to an album that sounds more like a jam session, with old buddies stopping by, than a studio affair. Congrats to producer Randy Labbe. Recommended.--GvonT

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group