Watermelon Slim and the Workers

Bill \"Watermelon Slim\" Homans sings like a baying basset, drawing the tongue-in-cheek misery of tunes like \"Hard Times\" and \"Check Writing Woman\" out in long, dry-mouthed syllables. But it\'s the slide guitar on this, his third album, that really howls, whether he\'s playing smooth and shimmery on his original take on the Robert Johnson myth \"Devil\'s Cadillac\" or drawing on the ghost of Elmore James on \"Hard Labor.\" That blend of humor--always delivered from a skewed autobiographical perspective--and raw-boned backwoods virtuosity makes this one of the year\'s more colorful blues albums and should elevate Slim from the genre\'s underground. And while his backing trio, the Workers, are a crack outfit whose spare accompaniment beautifully frames Slim\'s laconic musings, the solo \"Folding Money Blues\"--just Slim moaning along with his acoustic guitar--is a high point, with Slim telling his complaints to all the \"dead presidents.\" He deserves our ears, too. --Ted Drozdowski (Amazon)