Any time a Black performer is spotted with a guitar -- usually, not always, an acoustic one -- that performer can count on being pigeon-holed as a blues artist. Thus, we are to believe Lead Belly, Mississippi John Hurt and Mance Lipscomb, to cite three examples that come to mind, are "bluesmen," as if no more need be said. They weren't, in point of fact. Their repertoires incorporated blues material, but they also featured hymns, spirituals, folk ballads and songs, children's rhymes, pop tunes and more. In short, they didn't concentrate on a single genre; these musicians played whatever they liked and their audiences appreciated. They were known within their communities as songsters.

I'm sure that's why Dom Flemons, a performer who happens to be Black, now bills himself The American Songster. His music is blues only in small part. The rest of it travels the other highways and byways of our national musical tradition. He rose to prominence as a member of the deservedly celebrated, now defunct Carolina Chocolate Drops, reviving the all-but-dead phenomenon of the Black string band, whose origins predate blues by maybe two centuries. Flemons also possesses a commanding intellectual knowledge of the history of American roots and folk, from the rural, authentic stuff to its urban counterpart in the mid-century revival.

On his latest solo effort (backed by a small, able acoustic band), Traveling Wildfire, he remains committed to folkish styles. This time, though, the focus is largely on original material. The results can best be described as mixed. The album's first three cuts are country waltzes, a kind of music I generally like even as I've grown ever less enchanted with country itself over the years. The third of these, "If You Truly Love Me" (yes, a hackneyed title), is nonetheless pretty decent, by which I mean you will want to hear it more than once or twice. Cuts four and five would not be there if Leonard Cohen had not existed. They serve only to underscore the point that Cohen can't be replaced. The title tune and "It's Cold Inside," while not exactly bad, are just sort of beside the point. Cohen already wrote them, or their equivalent, and he wrote them better.

The album ceases its shaky feeling with Flemons' "Nobody Wrote It Down," about Black people's neglected presence in the Caucasian-centric attention of those who chronicled American history as it happened on the range and on the battlefield. He goes on to offer up a few more engaging originals, for example "Saddle It Around," showcasing Flemons's love of Western ballads, the subject of his Black Cowboys disc in 2018. "Big Money Blues" is a superior topical blues in the Piedmont style.

Beyond that, he turns to a handful of covers which work to happy effect. Especially strong are the hymn "We are Almost Down to the Shore" and the traditional, banjo-driven "Tough Luck." I also am impressed that he found one of the most obscure Bob Dylan songs ever, the Woody Guthrie-flavored "Guess I'm Doing Fine." It's new to me, and I suspect it will be to you, too. The album closes with the rousing "Songster Revival," sounding something like a hat tip to his Chocolate Drops years.

Michael Jerome Browne is a veteran of the Canadian music scene. Till now he was just a name to me, and I came to Gettin' Together (could there be a blander title?) without much in the way of expectation. Man, was I wrong. It turns out to be an object lesson in how to do familiar material, even blues (always trickier than they look on record or paper), if you bring yourself to it and know exactly what you're doing.

The bulk of this disc consists of downhome blues (mostly) from the likes of Brownie McGhee, Bukka White, J.B. Hutto, John Hurt, the Delmore Brothers and folk tradition, plus a judiciously chosen original or two. The sound is relaxed and confident, and the back-up players include the otherworldly guitarist Mary Flower, who sadly is famous only to those who have been blessed enough to hear her. Browne's warm, weathered voice makes one grateful that one's ears are in working order.

Some recordings are instantly lovable. Here's one for the lovelorn.