Call it country blues, folk blues, acoustic blues, downhome blues or (as in current fashion) prewar blues, it sneaked into white middle-class notice in the mid-20th century in the company of the folk revival. Until then, except by folklorists, ethnomusicologists and a few attentive lay geeks, "blues" was thought to be no more than an influence on or a component of jazz. More knowledgeable listeners began collecting old 78s from the 1920s and '30s, and some plunged into the field to seek out performers who had recorded back then, on the theory that a handful might still be alive. (They were.) Amid that growing interest, however, archaic blues was only spottily reissued. White folk singers who performed it usually were able to carve out a repertoire from whatever access they had to collections of 78s, and their listeners were dependent upon them to form some idea of what the music sounded like.

In due course independent labels (and on occasion major ones) figured out that a market existed for traditional music in direct and undiluted form. Anyone who has followed the reissue market more than casually by now probably possesses hundreds of retrospectives. The most commonly revisited genres are Southern: mountain string bands on one side, blues on the other. There is, obviously enough, a racial divide that some argue was more the creation of record labels than a reflection of real-world musical practices in that era and place. By the 1980s, anthologies sometimes featured more than one genre, alternating cuts by string bands and blues guitarists, sometimes black string bands and white bluesmen, or devoted entire collections to representatives of a single, 'til-now overlooked approach.

That way of making sense of the chaos continues to this day, perhaps as much the rule as the exception.

Among the lessons learned: contrary to mythology, white people can do the blues powerfully and meaningfully. The other was that blues recorded by the original Black performers is usually more interesting than the blue-eyed imitations. With reissues readily available we can see how recorded blues evolved into something even more racialized than the genre was when invented, apparently in the late 19th century in New Orleans, where it was played on horns and pianos before guitars entered the picture when the music left the city limits.

In the 21st century most people who listen to traditional blues are likely to be informed in the history and practice, and they are likely to listen to the bulk of it from Black guitarists and piano players. That's in part because they -- well, we -- may be momentarily amnesiac about the estimable presence of Charlie Musselwhite, Elvin Bishop, Maria Muldaur, Rory Block, Ry Cooder and others.

Among the "and others" are the persons responsible for the two albums mentioned above: Chris Yakopcic and the Cedar County Cobras, neither from the South. Yakopcic is from Dayton, Ohio, and the Cobras from Iowa City, Iowa. Historically, Dayton is associated with early bluegrass, and Iowa City with folk-inflected singers and songwriters such as Greg Brown and Bo Ramsey. The Iowa bunch, though, has always subsumed blues into its folk, which is only right since downhome blues is indeed a folk strain if one with a distinctive story.

The Cedar County Cobras' Homesick Blues sounds something like the albums another Iowa City figure, Dave Moore, used to release, with toned-down electric guitar and jumpy rhythms. They didn't imitate the originals, but they were certainly in the spirit, and they buoyed the spirit, too. In short, they were a lot of fun to listen to. The Cobras resemble nothing so much as a reimagined, stripped-down, jugless jug band. The covers here (e.g., "Walkin' Blues," "Trouble No More," "Poor Boy") stand on their own without occasioning thoughts of how much better Muddy Waters, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Son House, Sleepy John Estes and others associated with these numbers did them. That's the test, aced here.

Along with the time-tested material, multi-instrumentalist Tom Spielbauer contributes some worthy originals, blending older musical styles with an understated contemporary wit, exemplified in the wry opener "Utah." No downhome blues opens "She told me that she can't drive in Utah/ She gets stopped and they take her in/ ... She says she still owes 'em money/ And she never mailed it in." Actually, it's my impression that approximately half of all authentic downhome blues start with "I woke up this morning." Only William Harris, though, follows the line "with bullfrogs on my mind," often recalled when I awaken and the day ahead looms menacingly.

The other Cobra is acoustic-bass player April Dirks, who inserts occasional vocal fills, observations and retorts to good-humored effect. Her playing is pretty decent, too. Homesick Blues makes that sentiment, ordinarily painful, seem attractive.

I confess I did not experience love at first listening to Live at the Hidden Gem. It took more focused attention for me to pick up on Chris Yakopcic's subtle gifts. I had scanned the playlist and spotted some too familiar titles, Blind Blake's "Chump Man Blues" and a couple of Robert Johnson numbers, and was driven into an ever more readily set-off grumpiness, rooted in my growing list of complaints about what's wrong with much of the music that comes my way. (Charity prevents me from reviewing much of it.) Persisting nonetheless, I put the album on the player. Then I played it a second time. It's been on regular rotation ever since.

First of all, the guy is a first-tier finger-picking acoustic guitarist and, it soon becomes clear, a keen student of the blues, especially the elements that, while not bluntly obvious or audible, give the music its power. This becomes most apparent in precisely the three songs cited above. On first hearing one may anticipate hackish imitation. That's not Yakopcic's fault; we've heard so much of that we're almost programmed for it; thus we try to avoid blues pseudo-performance like the plague it is. Strangely, the more one hears the covers here, the more fascinating and appealing they become, as if sung in another language that seems recognizable only upon, at its soonest, second exposure. That's the best I can describe it. You'll have to hear it yourself, and then you can work out your own metaphor.

He's also a splendid songwriter, one of those rare living folk singers who compose work to which one actually wants to return. I do have my doubts, though, about his arrangement of Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song," which doesn't do much for me except feel gimmicky. On the other hand, he's in more cosy territory with the Tom Waits train song "2:19." Though a blues only by loose definition, Yakopcic's original "My Last Three Strings" is a standout.

The Midwest has always boasted its blues traditions. It wouldn't be the blues we know without Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Kansas City. It's good to know it's still out there even in the smaller cities, looking forward even as it's glancing behind. A few years ago I had persuaded myself that blues was on the road to extinction. Listening to these two albums, I allow myself the cheerful thought that I could be wrong.