Here are two blues recordings to restore faith in the minds of doubters (among them me in pessimistic moments) fretting about the music's continued vitality. Trudy Lynn and Crystal Shawanda, the first about twice the age of the other, have different approaches, but they both know something about blues with a feeling, to borrow a sentiment from Little Walter.

Houston-based Trudy Lynn, who is around 70, is out of the school of tough-minded belters, whose graduates boast Big Mama Thornton, Big Maybelle, Etta James and Koko Taylor. Unfortunately, neither the back cover nor the notes offer composer credits. I recognize "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show" from Big Maybelle, "When I Been Drinkin'" from Big Bill Broonzy and "That's All Right" from Jimmy Rogers (not, by the way, to be confused with Jimmie Rodgers) -- evidence in itself of Lynn's deep immersion in the blues and its history. Some of the cuts such as (I believe) the title tune are, so I infer, from Lynn's own pen, and they slide in easily next to the older material.

Working with harmonica player Bob Lanza, Lynn has assembled a rockin', swingin' band at home in any of urban blues' various forms: soul, r&b, Chicago, Memphis, Gulf Coast. She even makes something of the late Hoyt Axton's incoherent and generally annoying "Never Been to Spain," Three Dog Night's ubiquitous 1971 hit, once on the playlist of every bar band in the land. Maybe not a reason to turn teetotaler in those days, but close enough. Unsettlingly, Lynn treats the song as if it made sense, or is at least bearable.

In any event, Blues Keep Knockin' has survived many spins here at the old homestead, and I expect it will be up to yet more. That's the ultimate test as far as I'm concerned. Even with "Spain" Lynn is delivering, however improbably, the good stuff.

I have a hard time imagining Crystal Shawanda as a country singer, but I read here that she was one for the bulk of her career. Maybe still is, for all I know; VooDoo Woman may be no more than a side project if it is not a radical shift in artistic direction. Born in Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Ontario's Manitoulin Island, Shawanda had some commercial success in her native Canada but failed to break out in the United States. It's not for lack of talent -- one suspects talent is only an impediment in latter-day Nashville -- but for those of us who haven't heard her before, just the insipid power-pop "I'll Always Love You" (as dismal as its title sounds) betrays some idea of what she may sound like when not singing the blues.

VooDoo Woman showcases a woman with an almost shocking set of pipes. In my experience that fact doesn't necessarily lead to happy results, since too often possessors of such prove unable to resist the temptation to exhibitionism. The supremely confident Shawanda turns out to be an exception. Startling as what's in evidence on these grooves may be, one senses that she could have taken her voice further, maybe much further. (I don't know if that's literally true, but if you hear her, you'll know what I mean. It's her restraint, real or perceived, that works to her advantage.) In any event, either she knows the blues tradition, or somebody has brought her some first-drawer material.

That material includes two classic songs associated with Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle" and the traditional "Smokestack Lightnin'." Wolf's style was so distinctive that it poses a forbidding challenge to any bold or foolish enough to cover his material. The versions here are remarkably effective, nearly as stirring (if 21st century in their approach) in their own way as Wolf's, one conjuring up a raucous, even sinister urban party, the other a train on its way to some undetermined, conceivably demonic destination. In the latter instance, the final number, "Bluetrain" (an original by Shawanda and Dewayne Strobel, who also co-produce the album), returns to the theme to link it, via an impressive turn of imagination, to the fate of Robert Johnson.

Two songs are drawn from Big Mama Thornton's repertoire: her own "Ball & Chain" and Leiber/Stoller's "Hound Dog." Here as elsewhere, thundering but not bombastic electric guitars drive the narrative. On the other side the jazzy "Misty Blue" (written by Bob Montgomery), a slow tune, highlights Shawanda's mastery of the soulful and the intimate. I hope VooDoo Woman isn't the last of Shawanda's blues.