BIG JOE AND THE DYNAFLOWS, You Can’t Keep a Big Man Down—Good from the first drop to the last, You Can’t Keep a Big Man Down delivers musically on its title assertion, as the man himself has done physically—and then some, on both counts.

 

RICH DEL GROSSO/JONN DEL TORO RICHARDSON, Time Slips On By—With its solid songwriting, clever arrangements and masterful playing, Time Slips On By is a keeper of an album, and yet more proof of the blues’ continuing vitality.

 

TOM PRINCIPATO, A Part of Me—Now into his fourth decade as the majority party in the Washington, D.C. blues scene, guitar master Tom Principato has hit a real high water mark with his new album, A Part of Me. What we get here is pretty much all shades of electric blues, the tender and the tough, the funky and the hard hitting, on the first album of all-original songs Principato has ever released.