Let us be clear about this much: Little G Weevil is good at what he does, which is sounding like a downhome blues singer and guitarist. If that observation appears simple, it's because you didn't read it the way it was intended to be read. Explanation follows.

Through the bulk of its history, specifically from the moment a genre called "blues" emerged in the early years of the last century, a question, never answered, has lingered: who owns the music? Everybody agrees -- if there's any dissent on this, it's escaped me -- that blues is the creation of Black musicians. A growing consensus among scholars holds that its place of origin was New Orleans, where it was played on pianos and horns and evolved into jazz. Soon blues of a rougher sort spread to the countryside, where itinerant musicians introduced it to the more readily accessible and affordable guitar. According to one way of telling it, blues entered the songster repertoire as an anonymous folk music, though unlike most folk musics its trajectory was first from urban to rural.

But that sort of history is simplistic enough to generate wincing among those who know better. The real, near-bewildering history is the subject of a small library of learned treatments. Blues' influence spread everywhere, including into performances associated with white artists otherwise known for their contributions to pop, swing and country. Commercial record labels began issuing blues discs (under the generic designation "race records") in the early 1920s, and they quickly found a white audience as well as the targeted Black listenership.

At the same time a fair number of white rural musicians knew blues before there were race records; their Black neighbors played and sang it, and the white pickers learned it from them. Early hillbilly 78s from the 1920s and '30s showcase no shortage of either pure blues or blues echoes. In later decades, compilers would assemble retrospective surveys with titles such as White Country Blues: A Lighter Shade of Blue and two entirely separate samplers (on County and JSP) titled Mountain Blues.

The hillbilly 78s were sometimes covers of Black records, sometimes traditional songs captured as they floated through the neighborhood, while others were original compositions. Only rarely, however, did the performers try to imitate the distinctive vocal approach Black blues singers took. These records, enjoyable and accomplished for the most part, are manifestly the work of white guys (much less commonly, white women) at ease with what they're doing. If there were objections to their legitimacy or sensitivity, time has assigned them to the memory hole.

Now we jump over the decades to Little G Weevil and the blandly titled Live Acoustic Session. Put it on the player and listen to the first cut. On startled initial impression you may think you're hearing a lost Tommy Johnson side. You will do that if you haven't heard ... Little G? Or is it Weevil? (Let's call him LGW.) In that case your astonishment will only expand over 16 cuts and more than an hour and 15 minutes of songs and the occasional brief, wry monologue. Most of the songs are self-penned, but John Lee Hooker, R.L. Burnside and tradition show up as well.

There is no audience present beyond those of us who are hearing the proceedings as a recording. LGW and guitar are housed in a studio in Hungary. That's not because LGW is an American bluesman who happens to be cutting material overseas. He is Hungarian, not even an immigrant but a native. He fell in love with hard-core American blues when he heard it on the radio at an early age. He sings, however, as if (to paraphrase a Muddy Waters title) his home is in the Delta. In the spoken parts we hear a voice with only the faintest of accents. If anything, it boasts a hint of a Southern accent.

It bears noting that the international blues world has accepted him. He's been nominated for, and sometimes won, some prestigious awards. He's toured with American blues performers, among them African-American artists such as Big Jack Johnson, Denise Lasalle and Otis Taylor. He's talented, no doubt, but at what? Is this artistry or mimicry? Is this some distant cousin, even if unconscious (as I'm sure it is; I have no reason to suspect LGW of anything but the most benign and sincere motives), of black-face minstrelsy?

Frankly, I don't know. It has been a long time, it is true, since blues was a Black popular music. The small number of Black men and women who still perform it do it to a largely white audience. Black blues fans are either old people or younger persons engaged in conscious cultural revivalism.The latter depend upon white fans to support their efforts.

Most self-proclaimed blues these days is an extension of the guitar rock invented in the 1960s, at a time when that sort of stuff commanded a big chunk of the pop audience and didn't need an assertion of larger authenticity to sustain it. It doesn't do a lot for me, frankly, but I would never tell anyone else what he or she should like. Personally, I'd rather listen to music that sounds closer to LGW but isn't LGW, in other words to the records that inspired him. But if LGW, who unlike his heroes is young and touring, touches you with his particular approach in a century when blues as we knew it is just a breath or two from extinction, well, bless your heart and ignore my possibly foolish skittishness.

Two other out-of-the-ordinary recent blues releases, briefly noted.

Randy McAlllister is a strong vocalist and harmonica player out of Texas. His passions are blues, soul and r&b, and he is rightly acclaimed for his performances and recordings. On Power Without Power, backed by a shifting but always minimalist backing group, he puts surprising acoustic arrangements to 10 original yet in-the-tradition cuts, plus a Sam Cooke cover. What you get is an almost exhilaratingly fresh album, familiar on one level, novel on the other, that improves on each hearing.

To longtime fans of Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder (in whose ranks I've stood as long as I remember), Get on Board can feel like a dream fulfilled, except that the prospect of a collaboration -- on Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee songs yet -- would have seemed so beyond imagining that even dreams couldn't have swept them up and planted them in our wish garden. Yet here it is, and it is even more satisfying than I thought it would be when I, astonished, learned it was in the works: 11 blues and folk songs that, while culled from the Terry/McGhee repertoire, don't attempt to reproduce their arrangements. The good-timey spirit, though, is all around, as is the abundant shared spirit of masters Mahal and Cooder. This album has been widely remarked on and reviewed, and it's at the top of the blues charts.

The names cited above ought to be sufficient to entice the attention of anyone committed to the perpetuation and continued vitality of the last century (and more) of American roots music. If not, then Get on Board is not for you. For the rest of us, it's a tiny light a-glow in a world that grows darker by the hour. My advice: Take it into your life and hold it close.