Nobody does it quite like Steve Howell. Mind you, that's not because he's doing it large or otherwise seeking to draw cheap attention to himself. To the contrary, this is on a modest scale, which is the immediate thing that will impress you about what he's doing. He's not a singer-songwriter; he's pulling up obscure songs and tunes from the previous century, many of those pre-dating the rock 'n' roll era.

Howell's knowledge of American popular and vernacular music exceeds by a considerable margin the average guitarist's. In the Mighty Men (Chris Michaels, Dave Hoffpauir, Jason Weinheimer) he has three sympathetic musicians armed with guitars, keyboards, bass and drums and a shared passion for the American songbook in the broadest definition of same.

In their stripped-down approach they fashion a powerful music that manages to do its business with authority and nuance. It is no effort to cover the originals and recycle them as they were in their first incarnation. To the contrary, everything shines as if fresh and true. Every cut comes out his way: deceptively simple but able to withstand multiple listenings without boring anyone.

The songs cross genres. Most strikingly (to my ears, anyway) are his distinctively pointed yet unlabored readings of downhome blues such as Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Long Lonesome Blues," the opening cut. It's a serious song for grown-ups, and located in a landscape characterized by loss, ramblin', despair and lousy mail service, leavened by occasional eccentricity and an out-of-left-field observation about temperature conditions in China. I heard it first on an early Leo Kottke album (he renamed it "So Cold in China"); Jefferson's version came within listening range only later. But it is disconcertingly eerie, a dreamy, disturbing blues on the edge of a haunted otherworld. Interestingly, the three versions, none much alike, are each worth the encounter.

At the opposite extreme is a goofy love song cut by the long-forgotten Reflections, "Just Like Romeo and Juliet," an oddly lovable piece of fluff popular in 1964. I adored it at the time, but even then I knew it wasn't exactly fine art. If it weren't so eminently likable, in fact irresistible for all practical purposes, I'd have felt ashamed for stopping all else when it called to me from radio or jukebox. Till now, it and I hadn't crossed paths in decades. Though Howell and his boys don't try to be the New Reflections, somehow this teenagers-in-love anthem makes me a kid again. You know, back in the day when you didn't have to think about a song; all you had to do was like it or not like it. That was, in short, before critics like me started running interference.

Yeah Man revives "Little Old Wine Drinker Me," which will jolt memories in those who were listening to country music in the latter 1960s. Though Howell's liner notes don't mention as much, it was a parody of a comic wine commercial whose punch-line was "little old wine-maker me." Again, this hadn't crossed my mind or entered my ears in a very long time. To the extent that it survived in memory at all, I'd thought of it as exemplifying the disposable result of a standard Music City gimmick of the time: taking a momentarily popular catch phrase and writing/recording a song around it. OK, sour, cynical me. At least in the Howell-and-band arrangement it's a lot of fun on a surface level even as its surprising underlying sadness bleeds through.

Most of the album consists of blues, jazz and gospel from the likes of Bo Diddley, J.B. Hutto, the Clouds of Joy and other acts of yesteryear. Except for the magnificent oldtime spiritual "Wade in the Water," there are no actual folk songs here, a departure from previous releases and a modest disappointment to this listener. Still, there's no denying that the songs are smartly chosen and performed, and there's nothing to grumble about. In that regard it's like all the other albums -- some of which I've reviewed in this space -- with which Howell and associates have blessed us.