RECORDS / Blues: Bukka White - Baton Rouge Mosby Street (Blues Beacon, CD only)

Recorded in Munich in 1962, when the influential Mississippi singer-guitarist was in his mid-fifties and on tour with one of those marvellous American Folk-Blues Festival packages, this is valuable for the space it gives him to stretch out beyond the three-minute form. The six tracks, each between five and nine minutes, allow him to settle into hypnotic slow-rocking grooves founded on open-tuned drones, his ferocious growl playing against finger-picking that has the delicacy of Japanese koto music.