Belmont and Jones perform the pre-electric blues songbook with the integrity, frankness, brilliance, and humor with which it was performed by the great musicians who wrote and sang it. The authenticity of their work is in part due to Jones’ vocal chops, which rival those of the great vocalists whose hits she recreates. She would be an outstanding vocalist in any genre, and we thank her for putting her fine instrument to the service of preserving and transmitting this seminal moment in American music. Belmont sings it right too, but it is his National guitar, at times sounding eerily like it was recorded in 1926, that is the perfect compliment to their living museum. The artists Belmont and Jones feature may not resonate much as names today, but there was nothing marginal about them in their day, when their latest releases commonly sold in the millions of 78 rpm “race” records–and their stature remains undiminished. Belmont and Jones don’t just memorialize a time in American music that influenced everything that was to come. They bring it alive. In so doing they reconnect the wellspring of the blues to the mainstream of American music.
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