In common with just about all who have listened to a whole lot of music and are willing to follow it where it leads them, some records have not only stayed with me but guided me to places I would not otherwise have gone. Ry Cooder's early recordings did that for me.

What attracted me initially were Cooder's thrilling and original arrangements of songs by artists -- Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash -- I already knew. Those, of course, still sound as fine as they ever did. What made the deepest impressions, however, were his arrangements of songs associated with the Hawaiian guitarist Gabby Pahinui, the conjunto accordionist Flaco Jimenez and the Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spence. I knew nothing of them at the time.

The first two musicians played in Cooder's band from time to time. Not Spence; it was Cooder's version of "Great Dream of Heaven" on his second solo album, Into the Purple Valley (1972), that alerted me to one of the most distinctive traditional musicians I have ever encountered anywhere. Over time I found my way to albums by Spence, the Pinder Family (a singing group that included his sister Edith Pinder), and other folk musicians from the Bahamas, including those recorded in the field by Alan Lomax and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle almost a century ago (Deep River of Song: Bahamas 1935, reissued on Rounder, 1999). There, Spence first met folklorists from the mainland, and his music began to spread off the islands.

In the liner notes of Deep River, Guy Droussart writes, "The Bahamian tradition is a jewel-box of brief but flawless melodies, playfully rhythmicized in African style, and harmonies in ways that are as unique as they are in their gaiety, strength and clarity." (The one other folk song from there you're likely to have heard is "Sloop John B," believed to date from the latter 19th century.) On Encore, cut in good part in New York City in 1965 and unreleased heretofore, Spence showcases his strengths, namely his extraordinarily lovely playing coupled with a good-natured gravel-road singing voice to which, let me assure you, it is worth getting accustomed. It took me a while, but I (and hardly I alone) came to enjoy it immensely. Some parts of his vocals sound like a kind of downhome equivalent of scat singing. His growl obscures some of the words. No matter; you get the point, and to underscore the message, you will find your heart pumping in rhythm.

As is said of him, Spence, born in 1910, was both an intense traditionalist and a brilliant innovator. He learned to play guitar accompanying the singing crews of sponge boats off the coast of Andros, the biggest of the Bahamian islands. Eventually he moved from his native Andros to Nassau, getting recorded first on Folkways in the mid-1950s. He died in March 1984 in Nassau.

Like his fellow traditional island musicians, much of Spence's repertoire consisted of spirituals and shape-note hymns, including the likes of "Down by the Riverside" and "Give Me That Old Time Religion," which would be familiar to you if they were not arriving in your ear via Spence. There is also Billy Hill's vintage pop song "Glory of Love," which seems an odd choice unless Spence got it from Big Bill Broonzy's recording. One of my favorite songs of all time, "Run, Come See Jerusalem," a Bahamian ballad about a 1929 hurricane and shipwreck, written by Blind Blake (not the more famous Arthur "Blind" Blake, the singer/guitarist who cut popular blues 78s between 1926 and 1932), feels darker and scarier than ever in Spence's handling.

Perhaps the most surprising number, "Death and the Woman," is a very old British ballad (sometimes "A Conversation with Death") which Spence clearly picked up from Bahamian sources. A variant titled "O Death" is well known on the mainland from Appalachian variants by Dock Boggs and Ralph Stanley. As is usually the case, Spence's doesn't sound much like any version I've heard.

Joseph Spence is one of those artists who allow me to believe I have not lived an entirely misspent life. Every time I hear him, I feel as if some benign cosmic intelligence brought me to his presence so that the sheer joy and beauty of his music could wash over me. I guess this is as close as I get to a religion. In that context the unexpected release of Encore struck me as something of a miracle. I probably don't know you -- you may even have heard Spence, in which case I apologize for the presumption -- but I can predict with reasonable confidence that your life will be improved if you start listening to him. At his best, which he usually was, you'd almost think you were having a great dream of heaven.