Being only modestly conversant in Canada's blues scene, I was unfamiliar with Harpdog Brown till For Love & Money, recorded in Vancouver and produced by roots maven Steve Dawson, showed up in the mail. Before I'd read a line or heard a note, a glance at the cover photo told me he'd been around for a while (four decades, I read here). A listen to the first couple of cuts made it clear I'd been missing something.

Brown will likely inspire thoughts, at least in blues-literate American listeners, of veteran harpist Charlie Musselwhite, who shares the instrument with his Canadian colleague. Both men are oriented toward classic mid-century urban blues (in Musselwhite's case Chicago and West Coast), and both can hold their own with sounds that are credible against any in the genre. In the liner notes Musselwhite praises Brown as a master of the old school, which is, he avers, the "real school." No quarrel here.

Without earlier releases to compare it to, I'll have to take smarter observers' word for it that this is Brown's first foray into New Orleans-shaded r&b, which is to say a style that is among other things bouncy and horn-heavy. Brown sings persuasively in a good-natured, deep-throated fashion based in jazz of the Louis Armstrong school. On top of that, he has found an assortment of top-flight songs, which (it seems to me anyway) is a secondary consideration on too many recordings, leading me to suspect that even the most technically proficient musician may not always know a good song.

Brown has only two originals among the 13 here. Both -- "Reefer Lovin' Woman" and "Stiff" -- represent superior songwriting. The latter is particularly lovable, while I wonder if the former may have been inspired by "Whiskey Headed Woman," which I associate with the late Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, who is fading lamentably out of memory these days. Band keyboardist Dave Webb wrote the title song for Brown, cheerfully open about its debt to Big Bill Broonzy's beloved road standard "Key to the Highway."

For Love & Money has Brown going, so I infer, in what you might call a new old direction. The core elements are familiar but reassembled in an original manner in the way only a supremely confident, experienced and informed artist would attempt, or maybe even be able to imagine, without ever feeling either dated on one side or radical on the other. Besides that, it's a whole lot of fun.