Gregg Allman

Low Country BluesRounder ****

It's been 14 years since Gregg Allman's last solo album, but the 63-year-old singer and multi-instrumentalist, one of the last surviving major figures of the hard-living southern boogie generation, makes light of his absence with this impressive tribute to the enduring power of the blues. The hand of T Bone Burnett is all over the album, selecting the musicians, sorting out the tracks (of the 12, 11 are by key blues artists such as Otis Rush, Skip James, Muddy Waters, BB King, Bobby Bland and Sleepy John Estes) and crafting the production in a retro fashion coloured by cutting-edge sound. Allma's voice tunes into the varying demands of the songs, which range from country blues (James's ominous Devil Got My Woman) to Junior Wells's more sophisticated and wonderfully muscular Little by Littleor BB King's playful Please Accept My Love. It's some valediction, if that it be. See greggallman.com

Download tracks: Little by Little, Devil Got My Woman