Long-time St. Louis resident James “Boo Boo” Davis is one of the last of the bluesmen to have emerged from the harsh life of picking cotton in Mississippi (he was born in Drew), and his style is similarly old school – or ‘Old Skool’ as the track of that name reveals – and authentic. Although Black & Tan have tried, more successfully than you might think (take a listen to the closing ‘Who Stole The Booty’), to bring him up to date with electronics and have had him singing soul music, his default position is that of the down-home blues singer. These songs, drawn from his previous releases for the Dutch label Black & Tan between 1999 and 2015, are indeed one chord numbers, with Howling Wolf’s droning style and ferocious vocal stylings an obvious influence on numbers like ‘Blues On My Mind’, ‘Hard Times’, ‘Ice Storm’, and ‘The Snake’. ‘I’m Comin’ Home’ sounds like it should have been on a 78 issued by a small label out of Jackson, Mississippi in the early 50s, and ‘Can Man’ refers to his early musical experiences before he could afford a drum-kit. ‘Keep On Lovin’ Me Baby’ has a full band accompaniment, with some fierce blues-rock guitar over a boogie backing that owes something to Slim Harpo’s well-known ‘Shake Your Hips’, and it also features Boo Boo’s harmonica playing – not heard often enough, though it does feature on several other tracks here. I guess it probably depends on how much of this material you already have, but if you like your blues down(-home) and dirty, do investigate this.