For the past decade or so, Rory Block has been engaged in what could have been a suicide mission: cutting albums honoring an assortment of early blues artists. She has devoted whole recordings to Mississippi Fred McDowell, the Rev. Gary Davis, Bukka White, Skip James and the songster Mississippi John Hurt. Two years ago, she embarked on a "Power Women of the Blues" series with A Woman's Soul, a collection of Bessie Smith songs (reviewed in this space on 14 July 2018).

The second, Prove It On Me, is about no single performer but about a variety of them. Some are relatively well known, at least in blues circles (Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie), some middlingly noted (Lottie Kimbrough, Merline Johnson) and some obscure to me (Madlyn Davis, Rosetta Howard). They represent an assortment of styles urban and rural, at least in the original 78s, but Block makes each her own by the time she's through with it. The influences of folk and gospel on her approach are easily discerned.

This is more reinvention than revival, which means that the usual complaint -- why listen to the recreation when the original is easily available? -- does not apply. Block's ambitions are formidable, but so are her gifts. As with the earlier discs, she dominates Prove It on almost every level, not just performance and arrangement but production. It's homemade in the finest sense of the concept, and bless the Edmonton-based roots label Stony Plain for making it and its companions possible. These are not graveyard blues but blues dancing happily in the sunshine.