I'm just superstitious enough to look for omens and portents, in other words signs of things heading my way from out of the ether. Absorbed in music as I am, at the end and very beginning of a year I watch out for clues about what to expect -- or hope for -- in the 12 months ahead. Thanks to Benny Turner & Cash McCall, I go into 2019 with a warm, cozy feeling about what the blues has in store.

Going Back Home arrived in the mail on the very last day of 2018 along with two other packages of CDs. It immediately stood out ... well, sort of leaped out from the rest. Though not stars in the sense Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and a few others were, Benny Turner and Cash McCall were figures on Chicago's South and West sides clubs in the 1960s and early 1970s. Both had backgrounds in gospel and experience as both front- and side-men in blues/r&b outfits. Benny Turner was younger brother to the celebrated guitarist Freddie King. Born Morris Dollison Jr., Cash McCall, stage-named after the title character of a 1960 movie, also wrote hit songs for African-American acts of his generation.

Now living in New Orleans and Memphis respectively, Turner and McCall united -- not "reunited"; they had separate careers -- last year to record Home in studios in their current homes, plus a Chicago stopover to cut "It Hurts Me Too" (associated most prominently with Tampa Red and Elmore James, its melody borrowed from the Mississippi Sheiks classic "Sitting on Top of the World") with harmonica master Billy Branch.

The idea was to resurrect songs the two men sang or could have sung in their Windy City days. Maybe half of the 10 cuts will be familiar to blues fans, though none enough to wear out its welcome. There is a witty talking blues original (by McCall) titled "Poison Ivy" (not to be confused with the Leiber/Stoller "Poison Ivy," a 1959 Coasters hit). Otherwise, it's material from Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Elmore James, Willie Dixon and lesser lights such as the relatively obscure G.L. Crockett, co-composer of "It's a Man Down There," which I'd never heard before. It's a gem of wit and joy, an instant favorite thrillingly delivered.

Nobody does it better than the ones who grew up doing it, of course. This is what one wants in a blues record, starting with terrific songs and soulful performance. Even standards such as "Spoonful" and "Shake Your Money Maker" are jolted into new life and breath. Going Back Home doesn't encompass everything I love about the blues, but it has more of it than any album I've heard in a while.

Dry Johnson is not someone's first and last name but a couple of surnames: Terry Dry and Matthew Robert Johnson. I read here that they met in Fargo, North Dakota -- a city I know something about -- in 1998. Since then, though, they've been prominent parts of Houston's vibrant blues scene, not as headliners but as guitarist Mike Zito's rhythm section. Dry plays bass, Johnson drums. Zito is a ubiquitous presence here, as both vocalist and instrumentalist, along with other Texas notables including Trudy Lynn, Steve Krase and Jonn Del Toro Richardson.

Mostly Dry originals, the 11 songs conjure up a kind of eternal blues, which is to say a fusion of hard-driving, more or less downhome styles from the genre's century-plus history. It's something you couldn't imagine, much less play, if you weren't a serious blues geek. Though this isn't blues-rock (which is much of what passes for blues these days), there are, inevitably, elements of rock. Not enough, however, to derail the sense of authenticity the band communicates. It helps, too, that the rock-oriented "Too Many Hipsters" is genuinely funny. Also, the closer, "Little Bird," is country-folk in a Guy Clark vein. "Juke Joint" takes its inspiration from Western swing, not standard-issue blues, proving happily that Dry and Johnson have their ears attuned to other strains of rooted Texas music.

Bolstered by superior chops and musicians who are clearly enjoying themselves, Long Live Them Blues is more fun than your average album of kind. Which is to say, mmm, "white blues" (mostly). Whatever you call it, this is the way it ought to be done.