Tapping Voice of Experience

It’s a common observation that society lets men age gracefully--”distinguished” gray and all that--while women need to keep their youthful looks, or else.

Debbie Davies’ new wrinkle on her fourth album is to let her wrinkles show--vocally that is. Davies, the former Southern California blues-scene fixture now based in Connecticut, has always been an ace guitar player who managed to get by as a singer with a tuneful but not especially expansive or distinctive voice.

On “Round Every Corner,” a frayed, care-worn, husky grain emerges in place of her formerly clear-toned approach. This fountain of age works to an extent, lending more color and emotional authority to her singing, and opening more opportunities for the alert phrasing that singers need to cultivate when they aren’t blessed with the finest natural gifts. (Actually, it’s something the naturally gifted should master, too, if they want to truly stand out.)

But Davies, 46, isn’t quite there yet as a musical phraseologist, so the album, vocally, seems more like a step along her path than a blossoming into the complete blues woman. Davies, it should be noted, was judged sufficiently complete by her peers last year to win the W.C. Handy Award as female contemporary blues artist of the year.

She mixes styles successfully. The opening acoustic blues shuffle, “Sittin’ & Cryin’,” establishes a wry tone and an energetic bounce. Lamenting ballads, including the Paul Cebar-penned title track, give the collection its emotional ballast.

Davies states her pleas well in both Memphis soul and straight blues-ballad contexts. She balances the aching by giving a cheating lover a wry, sassy tongue-lashing in “Scratches” or, in “Homework,” letting dreamy lust take over, set to a sultry Latin groove. A clean, chiming-toned pop-rock cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain” follows the original closely but seems out of place.

It says something about Davies’ limitations as a singer, and her great ability as a guitarist, that easily the finest thing on “Round Every Corner” is “A.C. Strut,” an up-tempo blues-instrumental shuffle dedicated to the memory of her mentor, Albert Collins.

Davies comes out firing with stinging, cackling tones and never lets up, generating a spark that infects her studio band to romp along with her in a show of laughing-eyed vitality. Nobody can know whether Collins’ spirit wears a smile whenever Davies plays this fine tribute, but blues aficionados still breathing surely will.

*

* Debbie Davies plays Saturday at the Blue Cafe, 210 Promenade, Long Beach. 9:30 p.m. $8. (562) 983-7111.