These three new albums stretch the parameters for "blues" music even further than it's been stretched before. The promotional material for them makes reference to Robert Johnson, Mose Allison, Randy Newman, J.J Cale, Nick Drake, Chet Baker, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and more. I'm not going to tell you who is supposed to sound like (or be influenced by) whom. But listening to them, one wonders at how you might get a creative job like writing promo sheets. Must be fun to sit around thinking, "well, he plays a National guitar so . . . ummm . . . Robert Johnson." Well, Robert Johnson didn't PLAY a National guitar! Nevertheless the people looking through the racks and racks of new CDs need some direction in spending their hard earned cash, and telling them that the music will somehow remind them of "Cocaine," or "Short People," or "Abayoyo," or "This Land Is Your Land" provides a reference point. Our purpose at Green Man Review is to give our opinion on this stuff, and your job is to come to know what our likes and dislikes are so you can match it up with yours, and then we're all one happy community. So, pass the dutchie and read on.

Eric Bibb is the son of folk-singer Leon Bibb, the nephew of jazz giant John Lewis (Modern Jazz Quartet) and Paul Robeson was his godfather! He grew up surrounded by the major musical figures of the day, like Odetta, Richie Havens and Bob Dylan. He is a seasoned professional, a deft fingerpicker, with a silky and sensitive voice that is comfortable in a variety of settings. He simply is not a blues singer. What he does is, on this collection of fourteen original tunes (each one co-written with at least one collaborator), is take the framework of the blues and use it to create something that is his own. A Ship Called Love begins with the title track, a song inspired by Curtis Mayfield's classic "People Get Ready." Where Mayfield sang about the "train of freedom" Bibb sings about ". . . a ship called love gettin' ready to sail, people you know it's time to get on board." You will hear the source echoed, but Bibb manages to impress with a completely original take. The backup vocalists are the legendary Dixie Hummingbirds! The arrangement is a tribute to classic R&B. This is a fine beginning to an album that really grows on you. "Victory Voices" follows and it's a call to freedom for all, victory over disharmony, a mellow and moving ballad featuring only Bibb's subtle guitar, his warm vocals and some very gentle synthesized sounds by Gordon Cyrus.

That's about it for the rest of the album. Gentle rhythms, fine guitar work, and Bibb's intimate voice combine with thoughtful lyrics and sympathetic support from a handful of guests to create a very listenable album. Should it be filed in "blues?" Probably not, but I'd never look at it if was in "adult contemporary," would you? And this album is certainly contemporary, and Bibb's concerns are definitely "adult" so maybe we need to redefine the categories we use to label our music. Or better still, we need to forget the labels altogether and just say, "What a good album!"

Unfortunately I can't say the same for Brian Blain's Overqualified For the Blues. I had high hopes for this one. I had heard through the grapevine that the early recording sessions were aimed at getting the kind of feel as John Hammond's Wicked Grin album. Raw, primitive, and unrestrained . . . but then producers changed and went for something else. Well, what we have here is neither fish nor fowl. Brian Blain is a talented guitarist, and a song-writer of some skill, but somehow the lyrics written for Overqualified . . . strike me as corny, hokey, and the presentation is dull. "Saab Story" starts us off, a little swing number with Michelle Josef on drums, Victor Bateman on bass, Richard Bell on piano and Jim Galloway on sax, and Blain's guitar and soft melodic vocals. It's a sob story about a girl and her car! Get it! Oh boy!

And there's more where that came from. "Blues Is Hurting," is a sob story for an old blues singer; "No More Meetings" a series of complaints about doing volunteer work; all the music is quite good, played well by some hot musicians. Michael Jerome Browne, Marc Roy, Rod Phillips, Michael Fonfara, Paul Reddick, Daisy Debolt, and more. But then Blain sings his lyrics and, for this listener at least, the whole thing falls apart. I was telling a producer friend of mine about the album, and he said that he had seen Blain live a couple of years ago, then he said, "Blues man? HaHaHa!" So I guess I'm not the only one who feels this way.

The third album under consideration is Chris Whitley's Soft Dangerous Shores, the latest of this singer/guitarist's sonic assaults. This is the guy people say was influenced by Robert Johnson, but he has grown far beyond being a Delta-blues copyist. Whitley has his own distinctive sound and approach. It's a visceral, almost abstract attack. Seeing him in concert leaves the audience drained, thrilled, exhausted. Listening to this CD requires concentration. It's not background music. While I couldn't listen to Brian Blain in the car because it was dull, Whitley is too powerful. He reaches out and shakes you. You will not doze off while playing one of his albums.

"Love and death," Whitley declares in a recent interview, "that's what this album is about. That's what all art is, or should be about." He continues, "The blues as a form holds no interest for me, THIS is the blues to me!" He points to a well-read copy of Andre Breton's The Writings Depart. One of Breton's poems provided the title for Whitley's new album. "A rip in the surface of the heart / The morning papers bring women singers / whose voices are the color of sand / on soft dangerous shores." Just as Breton's surrealistic poetry conjures images far deeper than the language allows, so too the lyrics of Whitley's songs go beyond the typical song-story.

Whitley's songs are like a Jackson Pollock painting, seemingly disparate, almost casually created, splashes of this and that form a whole that only makes sense when seen from a vantage point of experience and distance. Visceral, rhythmic, casual yet focused, this isn't the blues, and Chris admits it. It too is a kind of "adult contemporary" music but absolutely opposite to what you'd usually find there. No mellow classic American songbook here. No horns. No strings. Except the six strings on Whitley's National guitar. And the four bass strings of Heiko Schramm. Matthias Macht supplies drums and percussion. Malcolm Burn adds keyboards and processing. They play this brave music as one.

Whitley's lyrics continue the imagery of Breton, "You see her eyes open into frame / what sacrifice disregards a game / as two awake behind burning doors / you follow her thoughts on soft dangerous shores."

There you have it. Three brand spanking new albums, all of which will find a home in the "blues" section of your local CD shop. Each one offers something different. Not one of them can be called the blues. There are no (or very few) three chord progressions 12-bar structures here. No lyrics about a good man feeling bad. But there is some art, there is some fine guitar playing, and some sonic wonders.