A blues piano player from the Boston area, Anthony Geraci boasts the sort of sound that only one with the requisite experience and talent can produce, one that fashions an organic mix of modernity, tradition and personal expression. Daydreams in Blue brings together some of the foremost musicians on the scene, including Dennis Brennan (vocals on all but one cut, harmonica), Monster Mike Welch (guitar on most cuts) and others in service to a contemporary blues not dependent on cranked-up amplifiers to call attention to itself.

The one adjective an informed listener is least likely to think of is "downhome." Geraci, obviously versed in mid-century jazz and beyond, takes his blues cues not from the genre's early history but from approximately the middle of the last century to the present. At points it bears a kind of urban sophistication one associates with the likes of Charles Brown, Bobby Bland and Little Milton, but Geraci steps outside here and there, for example with a charming homage to the rough-edged, Charlie Patton-taught Howlin' Wolf on "Mister," which sends up Wolf's "Mr. Airplane Man" and "Mr. Highway Man" with witty precision. You won't get the joke, though, if you don't know the songs.

Probably nobody whose ears function will fail to connect "Tutti Frutti Booty" with Little Richard's inimitable horn-dog yowl. But even when Geraci's songs (10 of a dozen) are morose meditations, they are performed at various tempos, always swinging or rocking, never only self-pitying. "Dead Man's Shoes" is a particular standout, as creative and out of the ordinary as anything you're likely to hear. It's credited to Brennan, Troy Gonyear (guitarist on four cuts) and Peter Wolf. A meditation dark as a moonless night, it takes the meaning of "step into another's shoes" at its most literal. I'd go so far as to pronounce it one of the most impressively imagined songs, in any genre, that I've heard so far this year.

Daydreams in Blue is the sort of album that ought to draw repeated spins on whatever musical device you play your tunes on these days. It's not often that you hear blues that encompasses nearly everything that brought you to the music in the first place and keeps bringing you back for more.

Kenny "Blues Boss" Wayne (Kenneth Wayne Spruell on his 1944 birth certificate) grew up (with the occasional detour) on America's West Coast. As a young piano player he was influenced by black musicians such as Nat King Cole and Fats Domino, who bore inevitable blues influences but whom few would call bluesmen. In the 1980s, after years as a sideman to various pop and rock artists, he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, and eventually made a name on his own while working Canada's blues circuit. He started recording in the mid-1990s.

Since 2011 he's recorded on Holger Peterson's prestigious blues-and-roots label Stony Plain, based in Edmonton, Alberta. The albums, including Go, Just Do It!, showcase his laid-back, swinging style and good humor befitting an easy-to-like approach. The new release strikes me as at the top of the lot (not that any are less than decent), with consistently first-rate material (generally original) and an on-the-mark band with occasional appearances (though not together) by female vocalists Dawn Tyler Watson, Julie Masi and Diane Schuur.

Go, Just Do It!, more blues-ish than blues, mostly evokes blues cousins r&b, jazz and soul. In so doing, it pursues no larger ambition than to conjure up a good-time African-American pop vibe from another generation. The songs that are not Wayne's compositions are from the immensely gifted but nearly forgotten Percy Mayfield (1920-1983). His "You're in for a Big Surprise" is the one tune to which the adjective "ominous" may be said to apply. On the other hand, Mayfield's "I Don't Want to be President" is an amiable goof, rendered by a properly amused Wayne.

On the other cover, the JJ Cale classic "Call Me the Breeze," Wayne fumbles the metaphor. Cale wrote and recorded it as They call me the breeze/ I keep blowin' down the road. Disappointingly, Wayne, er, blows the metaphor, turning the second line into I keep rollin' down the road. It's enough to ruin the performance for us pointy-headed writers and language geeks.

Still and all, Kenny Wayne is a certifiable pro, and in its low-key way his album ingratiates on just about all fronts.