Tony Joe White's Hard to Handle album is built around a concert recording made in 1969 or 1970. It features White swaggering through a clutch of tough-as-rock blues and soul covers like Big Joe Williams' "Baby Please Don't Go," Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle" and Jimmy Reed's "You Got Me Runnin'," as well as some originals. "I Want You" is a sludgy, nasty groover that has some truly scuzzy guitar solos and sounds like it could have come off a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion record, one of White's trademark swampy story songs "Roosevelt & Ira Lee (Night of the Moccasin)," and "When You Touch Me," a slight and uninteresting jam. Too bad the whole concert sounds like it was recorded through a wall of steel wool. The vocals are muffled at times; the sound cuts in and out and generally sounds no better than a hastily made bootleg. A couple of the songs ("I Want You" in particular) show White to be a dynamic performer with a lot more guts than one might imagine.

Tony Joe's first U.S. release since 1983 finds the swamp-rocker in rare form. Produced by Roger Davies – Tina Turner's manager/producer, and the one responsible for her '80s breakthrough – this is the most cohesive album he's made since his early Monument LPs with Billy Swan. Tony Joe is kept tightly focused with a small combo (Hammond organ, bass, drums), and the rest of the space in the mix is occupied by the star's funky guitar, harmonica, and breathy vocals, recorded so close he sounds like he's two inches from the listener's face. It also helps that Tony Joe's songwriting skills have only sharpened over the years; the disc is simply loaded with great songs, including "Crack the Window Baby," "Gumbo John," "I Want My Fleetwood Back," and the moody "Cold Fingers," "I Believe I've Lost My Way," and "Across From Midnight." One of his very best, and as highly recommended as they come.

The Best of the Allman Brothers offers a brief but effective introduction to the band, featuring such hits as "Ramblin' Man", "Crazy Love", "Melissa", "Jessica", and "Statesboro Blues".

Tony Joe White's self-titled third album, Tony Joe White, finds the self-proclaimed swamp fox tempering his bluesy swamp rockers with a handful of introspective, soul-dripping ballads and introducing horn and string arrangements for the first time. The album – White's 1971 debut for Warner Bros. – was recorded over a two-week period in December 1970, in two different Memphis studios (one was Ardent Studios, where Big Star later recorded their influential power pop albums). His producer was none other than London-born Peter Asher, who had just produced James Taylor's early hits for the label (he would continue to produce hits for Taylor and Linda Ronstadt on his way to becoming one of the most successful producers of the '70s). One can surmise that Warner Bros. may have put White and Asher together as a way for the producer to work his magic with an artist who had much promise.

Smokin' Joe Kubek and Bnois King first hooked up in 1987, and their musical association has lasted nearly 20 years. Their albums are dependable affairs that stick close to good old barroom Texas blues, and if they seldom deviate from that, well, that's fine, because they do it as well as anyone this side of Stevie Ray Vaughan. Road Dog's Life is the pair's second album for Delta Groove Music, who they signed with in 2012, and it follows the unplugged Close to the Bone, marking a return to plain old electric Texas blues. That's what you get here, plain and simple, with ten originals and an impressive pair of covers, the Rolling Stones' "Play with Fire" and the Beatles' "Don't Bother Me," both among the albums highlights. The sound, recorded by Prince's long-time engineer David Z, is warm, full, and makes intelligent use of stereo separation to give everything a broad, powerful kick. There's nothing new here – Kubek and King aren't trying to expand Texas blues as much as they simply revel in it – which is a good thing, since they do it so well.

Smokin' Joe Kubek and Bnois King's albums are dependable affairs that stick close to good old barroom Texas blues. The lyrics won't win any Pulitzer Prizes, and while Kubek is an amazing guitar player with a huge tone, he isn't exactly reinventing the instrument, and likewise King, although he is a distinctive and pleasant vocalist, isn't going to be mistaken for Marvin Gaye anytime soon. Not much has changed on their second release on the Blind Pig label, and Show Me the Money delivers another dose of straight-ahead roadhouse blues. If there are any concessions here, it is that all the songs pull in at a radio-friendly length, and at least one, the infectious "My Heart's in Texas," would fit effortlessly on "new country" play lists. The first two tracks, "I Saw It Coming" and "Burnin' to the Ground," pretty much lead the charge here, and King's easy, subtle singing pairs nicely with Kubek's gutbucket guitar tone, but there are no real surprises waiting in the grass, and certainly nothing that will shake the roots of the music industry – just solid blues-rock. Somebody's gotta do it, and Kubek and King do it so well.

Picking out the best instrumentals from Carlos Santana's thirty-year recording career is a daunting task at best, and a fan can certainly find reasons to disagree with some of the choices made in this collection. However, this German release is valuable in bringing together undisputed Santana classic guitar pieces like "Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)," "Samba Pa Ti," "Flor D'Luna (Moonflower)" and "Soul Sacrifice" with lesser known masterworks like "Aqua Marine" and the superb "Song of the Wind." True, there's no "Toussaint L'Ouverture" or "Incident at Neshabur," but how would you like to have to narrow this long-lived band's catalog down to fifteen tracks? Besides, the true fan already has the original albums and earlier compilations. This disc takes its listeners on a high intensity trip through time on the spiritual wings of Carlos Santana's soaring electric guitar. It's a trip worth taking.

The best of all of Al Kooper's studio albums, Rekooperation is a mostly instrumental album, on which the artist (playing organ and piano, and occasional guitar) and a band including Jimmy Vivino, Harvey Brooks, and Fred Walcott, among others, roar and pound their way through a baker's dozen of R&B, rock & roll, and soul classics. Everything from chestnuts like "Soul Twist," "Honky Tonk," "Johnny B. Goode," "Clean Up Woman," and " "Don't Be Cruel" to originals such as "Downtime" and "Alvino Johnson's Shuffle," without a notable gap in quality between them, are included – and the one vocal number, "I Wanna Little Girl," contains one of the finest singing performances that Kooper has ever turned in on record (but is also played so well, that it would work as an instrumental too). In many ways, this recording is a distant cousin to Blood, Sweat & Tears' Child Is Father to the Man, and was his first attempt at leading a band since that 1968 venture, which was sort of fitting since it led to Soul of a Man, Kooper's live-in-concert career retrospective album, the next time out.

Stone the Crows was a tough-luck, working class, progressive soul band that came out of the pubs of Scotland in the early '70s. They had everything going for them at the start: not one, but two gritty singers, a talented guitarist, a rhythm section that had played with John Mayall, and the name recognition of having Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant as their producer. Despite favorable reviews by the critics, however, they never managed to sell their hybridized soul music to a large audience. In addition, they lost two of their key members early on, one of whom was tragically electrocuted, and the group broke up after four albums. Their biggest contribution to rock was the immense vocal talent of one Maggie Bell. Winner of several Top Girl Singer awards in Britain, Bell had a raunchy, gutbucket voice that, although it fell short of the naked emotion and range of Janis Joplin's, came probably closer to her style than any other female singer.