This brand new RockBeat Records release is a long overdue and absolutely beautiful career retrospective on one of the great blues singers of the last generation. Barton’s music is a throwback to a time when records had a regional accent and flavor. That flavor and North Texas accent are in full effect on this intelligently conceived offering.

Barton, a Fort Worth, Texas, native moved south to Austin in the early 70’s. At the time, Austin was part college town, part state capitol and part cosmic cowboy command center all at the same time. A bunch of young blues devotees were about to change that image forever. Out of this milieu rose a singer whose no holds barred approach to her instrument helped balance the stage with her male guitar slinging counterparts.

This chronologically arranged CD features emerging six string savants such as Denny Freeman, Derek O’Brien and the bad boy of the burgeoning blues scene in Austin, Jimmie Vaughan. It is Vaughan whose career is intertwined with Barton’s and is heard throughout this twenty song set.

Songs from both Barton’s Atlantic as well as Antone’s solo releases are here. This part of the package, which makes up the center of the album, leans heavily on the superior Antone’s release entitled, Read My Lips. These tunes feature a cadre of Austin heavyweights including all three of the previously mentioned guitar players, along with tenor sax man Mark “Kas” Kasenoff, harmonica player Kim Wilson, bassist Sarah Brown and the powerful and inventive drumming of George Rains.

A couple of tracks are pulled off the Dreams Come True album including a personal favorite, I Idolize You. There is a song from her brief stint with Roomful of Blues in the early eighties. Three tunes with Jimmie Vaughan and his Tilt a Whirl Band including those coming from the Blues Ballads and Favorites series are the most recently recorded tracks. One of these is a live recording of the gospel infused Faye Adams classic, Shake A Hand. It came from an appearance at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles a couple of years back and was previously only available on the vinyl and European releases of Vaughan’s More Blues Ballads and Favorites.

The real treat here is that five previously unreleased tracks by The Fabulous Thunderbirds, going all the way back to 1981, feature Barton’s vocals in a very early incarnation of that band. Drummer Fran Christina and bassist Keith Ferguson along with Wilson on harp and, of course, guitarist Jimmie Vaughan back Barton on these barn burning sides. These tracks are a real revelation as this material from the most formative years of that band has been under lock and key for over thirty years.

The entire package is a wonderful showcase as to what is possible when a singer of this caliber is paired with musicians of immense talent taking on great material. Few singers can swing the blues with a combination of reckless abandon and control all at the same time. At the heart of her singing lies both confidence and vulnerability. Barton approaches this material with both maturity and youthful exuberance. All of it has an undercurrent of sexuality that is dripping with danger as well as a hint of fun. For forty years, Lou Ann Barton has been serving up this powerful concoction. This release is a Texas sized glass of that enticing elixir.

- David Mac