Electric guitarist Ronnie Earl & the Broadcasters, who have been around since 1988 delivering blues and jazz, record prolifically. Through it all Earl operates at a level of technical excellence (though never flashily practiced) that few can match. He is not a singer; thus, his recordings sometimes consist solely of instrumental compositions, generally his own. Good as they are, those recordings appeal primarily, I've often suspected, to other musicians who have a more sophisticated idea of what he's up to than do civilian listeners like me.

Beyond the Blue Door, though, turns out to be a happily accessible album with a generous supply of vocal material from Broadcaster Diane Blue along with Kim Wilson (harmonica) and David Bromberg (acoustic guitar). Generally known as a product of the folk revival, in a sense Bromberg is the most unexpected figure, though he has recorded some electric blues. Here he holds court with Bob Dylan's long-windedly titled "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" (briefly known, more succinctly and less irritatingly, as "Phantom Engineer"). It is a lovely song, more like the work of an early folk-blues Dylan than the rocked-up numbers that surround it on Bringing It All Back Home (1965). If not a natural vocalist, Bromberg manages to do it right enough. Beyond that, three guest horns sometimes fill and amplify the other tunes.

Otherwise, the songs are Chicago blues standards, r&b hits ("Drown in My Own Tears," "Drowning in a Sea of Love," both penned by Gamble & Huff, evidently committed to metaphor conservation) and impressively crafted originals, not least Earl's Trump-era topical pieces "Blues for Charlottesville" and "Why Can't We Live Together." A couple of jazz-accented cuts, both Earl compositions, pay tribute to the styles of Howlin' Wolf -- even if jazz is not exactly what comes to mind when one hears that downhome master -- and T-Bone Walker. The recording opens with Jerry Butler's chipper "Brand New Me," followed by the traditional, and darker, "Baby How Long."

One can imagine that a 1970s California country-rock band could have called itself Breezy Rodeo. Breezy Rodio, however, is a Chicagoan, and that's his real name, except for the first part, which is presumably not on his birth certificate. Released last year on the venerable Delmark label, Sometimes the Blues Got Me slipped through the cracks after two or three spins on the record machine. I intended to review it but got distracted, as sometimes happens, by subsequent disc-bearing mail. Not long ago, I recovered it by accident as I dug through a boxful of CDs in search of something else.

Though not fresh out of the pressing plant, Sometimes is more than worth seeking out if you love the blues and embrace sounds at once traditional and immediate. Guitarist Rodio's approach is his own -- you won't confuse it or him with anything or anybody else -- and his gaze is not set in ordinary directions. It follows blues, both as itself and as an element of classic pop, swing, and jazz from the 1940s onward. It even encompasses something akin to vintage country. His "Change Your Ways" evokes what Hank Williams might have been if he had elected to be an electric bluesman. Rodio goes on to charge up the Delmore Brothers' long-comatose "Blues Stay Away from Me."

I am a bluesman, you got that right, he avers on his self-written "Let Me Tell You What's Up." No one is likely to dispute that identification. Even so, Rodio's manifest debt to the mid-century popular mainstream is unapologetic and well-informed, but incorporated organically into a larger vision of the genre with which he most identifies.

A whole hour and six minutes long, with more than half of the 17 cuts his own creations, Rodio's album never bores or tries patience. His vocals, guitar style and splendid small combo combine to conjure up pleasure and joy. These days, too many of the self-identified blues artists I hear possess an unmistakable love of the music unmatched by anything interesting to say about it. Rodio has the love, no doubt about that, but meanwhile his creativity and originality explode in every note.