Certain independent labels, all to be treasured without exception, rarely release a recording I don't like. Opening a package from such an outfit is an exercise in pleasant, sometimes bordering on giddy, anticipation. Catfood is one of those labels. What makes it unique in my experience is that its principal focus is a musical genre in which I claim no expertise and to which I am only a casual listener. With no exceptions I can think of, Catfood always makes that music interesting.

I don't mean to suggest that I dislike soul and r&b. Not at all. It's just that the day holds so many hours and within that only so many hours that can be devoted to listening to music. After many years I'm still educating myself in straight-ahead blues as well as other rooted genres, and soul is out there somewhere in the unavailable hours. A Catfood release suddenly again in my life is, in short, always a chance to retouch a base. It's always trustworthy. It's not going to waste my time, and it's not going to irritate or bore me. Those with ears and a Catfood album or two or three in their listening history will know what I'm saying.

With longtime singer/guitarist Johnny Rawls's Walking Heart Attack, label head Bob Trenchard -- also a bass player in the house band, the Rays -- has moved his r&b headquarters from the unlikely El Paso, Texas, to the equally improbable Lincoln, Nebraska, the latter chosen not at random but as a return to native ground where he grew up. The album, however, was cut in Texas and mixed and mastered in Tennessee. As usual the sound is crisp and joyful, a delight to any ear sufficiently lucky to catch it.

As usual, too, Trenchard is present as writer or co-writer (with Rawls) on several cuts. Others are thoughtfully chosen covers, in particular the crypto-gospel "Born All Over," an inspirational number with multiple meanings. It's co-composed by the late and still-missed Johnny Copeland, father of Shemekia Copeland, a significant blues figure in her own right. Two cuts later, Rawls/Trenchard's "One More Sin" might be thought, if taken perhaps a shade too seriously, to be something like counter-gospel sentiment.

While on one level Walking is a classic-soul outing (with production, basically that of a 1970s-1980s urban blues band, to match), on another it has surprises in store, both obvious and not so apparent.

On the former side, there's the inclusion of Bruce Springsteen's celebrated rock 'n' roll shout-out "Hungry Heart," in Rawls's clever handling akin to an organic soul anthem. The closing cut, Trenchard's "Mississippi Dreams," is a moving soul-folk revery for a state with a checkered reputation not consigned entirely to its past; none in the union has had so many unflattering songs at offer on history's jukebox. I think immediately -- there are many others -- of Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam" and Phil Ochs' "Here's to the State of Mississippi," the latter among the more sarcastic toasts one is likely to encounter.

It is also where Rawls was born more than 70 years ago. Through memory's mist and a remarkably evocative vocal he manages to uncover what's worth celebrating. Say what else you will, Mississippi has gifted the rest of us with some astounding, world-class musicians. Rawls may not be among the most famous, but he's certainly helped uphold an honorable reputation.