The link between the country singer Johnny Cash and blues music may not be readily apparent — but Johnny’s Blues: A Tribute to Johnny Cash (Northern Blues) tries to find it. A variety of blues stars tackle the late and great man’s songs. While it can’t be said to be an unqualified success, tracks such as Maria Muldaur’s Walking the Blues and Mavis Staples’s plaintive and moving Will the Circle be Unbroken give it more than just novelty value.

Recordmen like Hy Weiss are a dying breed. In the 1950s he started a New York record label and recorded some of the city’s greatest black vocal groups and blues acts. A double CD of his efforts, Hy Weiss Presents Old Town Records (Ace) includes the Harptones and the Solitaires alongside blues by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and rock’n’roll from Billy Bland.

Over on America’s West Coast, the band leader Johnny Otis was also discovering fresh talent, much of which can be heard on The Johnny Otis Show (Ace) which has live broadcasts of Otis’s band in the 1950s plus airchecks of his radio show. So, in between vintage ads for haircream and cars we hear the Penguins, Don and Dewey and Marie Adams.

More live music, but of a later vintage, is on a CD from one of the leaders of the British blues boom, The Yardbirds. Live! Blueswailing July ’64 (Castle) features the guitar work of the young but awesomely talented Eric Clapton (pictured below) on cuts such as The Sky is Crying.

Two great compilations are also out this month. Blowing the Blues (Indigo) is a three-CD history of the blues harmonica which features Little Walter’s fabulous Juke and Sonny Boy Williamson’s haunting Mighty Long Time, while the double CD set Alan Lomax: Blues Songbook (Rounder) includes the pick of the field recordings that Lomax and his father made for the Library of Congress.

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