While Norman Blake is not famous to a mass audience, he is well known to some famous people, from Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, in whose respective bands he once played, to the movie-making Coen Brothers. Most listeners who are not ordinarily attuned to traditional music likely crossed paths with him if they bought the best-selling 1997 soundtrack for the Coens' O Brother Where Art Thou? He sings "You Are My Sunshine" on that one. He also played on Bob Dylan's country-accented Nashville Skyline in 1969 and on Joan Baez's hit "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" in 1971. In 1972, along with other roots performers (including Doc Watson and Roy Acuff) he guested on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's celebrated Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Though at one time a Nashville studio musician, Blake is not a country artist in any modern sense but a folk singer in an older one. On his own -- beginning with his first solo album, Home in Sulphur Springs (1972) -- he (on occasion with his wife Nancy Blake) has recorded trad songs and instrumentals, most though not all from his native South, and in-the-tradition originals in spare acoustic, perfectly executed settings. In addition to his masterly readings of older material, he has composed such classics as "Slow Train Through Georgia," "Billy Gray," "Down Home Summertime Blues," "Last Train from Poor Valley" and "Randall Collins" -- just to mention the five that come immediately to mind.

The specter of advancing age has stalked Blake's recent albums, most evident in his previous one, Brushwood Songs & Stories (2017), the only Blake recording I would hesitate to encourage a first-timer to seek out. But the move to Smithsonian Folkways on Day by Day proves a wise decision. If his voice is not what it was, it's still perfectly workable, and the nine cuts are all inspired choices. They were recorded in a single afternoon in an Alabama studio, all but two accompanied by his solo guitar or banjo. On the closers he brings in his longtime playing partners, the Rising Fawn String Ensemble.

Formally, there is only one original song, the appropriately themed "Time" -- "Old Joe's March" is a deceptively antique-sounding banjo tune -- but Blake freely reworks some dust-covered stuff. A good part of "My Home's Across the Blue Ridge Mountains," for example, bears Blake's lyrics, which unless you know the old versions you won't notice. Blake's immersion in the vernacular sounds of another age is such that he practically speaks the language. Though Blake has his own distinctive approach to the tradition, he never feels as if he's faking his presence there. "The Dying Cowboy" is more often recorded as "Streets of Laredo," except that Blake draws on obscure variant lyrics and his own creative contributions. Laredo itself, in fact, goes unmentioned. I've loved this song since I was a kid (it was written in 1876, a little before my time); even so, the timelessness of Blake's approach, wherein the old feels current and the new age-worn, supplies it with the particular Blakean punch.

Songs derived from the oldtime 78s of the 1920s and '30, which comprise the roots of what eventually would be marketed as country music, have long been integral to Blake's repertoire. Many of the selections entered the world as 19th- or early 20th-century popular songs, usually sentimental or humorous. Though not written by A.P. Carter, the opening cut, "When Roses Bloom" (otherwise with "in Dixieland" attached, as in an earlier cover by the Blakes), is associated with the Carter Family. Those who know their Charlie Poole will recognize "Three Leaves of Shamrock" as a revised "Leaving Dear Old Ireland," the sort of vintage Irish-American pop song that is usually unbearable when warbled by feebler talents.

I last heard "Montcalm & Wolfe," a rarely recorded broadside ballad from the French & Indian War (1754-1763), after it was cut by Ian & Sylvia, who called it "Brave Wolfe." Its appearance here underscores Blake's engagement with folk-music traditions outside the South. The historical battle at the center of the song took place in eastern Canada, in the bloody course of which the opposing generals, the French Montcalm and the English Wolfe, were slain. Blake's reading is not just melancholy but borderline unearthly.

Day by Day clocks in at 35 minutes, making it (I think) Blake's shortest. If he is to be believed, it will be his last. If there's any good news in this, it's that he doesn't waste a minute or a song, employing each to full, if characteristically understated, effect. It is fair to say that when we speak of Blake we are talking about somebody who may be the most gifted American folk artist since Woody Guthrie. (Let us leave out for separate discussion the very special case of one Mr. Dylan.) Of course, Blake is far less known than, and very different from, the undisciplined, inconsistent and once in a while politically lunk-headed Guthrie. Blake, too, has been around for so long that even those who have admired his music have acted, however irrationally, as if he would be around forever.

If Day by Day proves to be his final gift to listeners, you would be well advised to pick it up and hold it close. Another Norman Blake won't be arriving soon.