The Word on ‘One Little Word’: Great

So here’s this Costa Mesa blues man I knew nothing about, with a debut CD on an unheard-of custom label, and it turns out to be something the whole blues world should toast with the best whiskey in the bar.

Brooks is a Wichita, Kan., native who has been playing on the Southern California blues scene since 1989. His biggest credit to date has been teaming with Southland blues institution Bernie Pearl in the Big Muddy Trio and the Bernie Pearl Blues Band. As singer-songwriter-harmonica players go, Brooks, 36, lacks the profile of such Southern California-based figures as Kim Wilson, James Harman, Rod Piazza, Robert Lucas and Big Al Blake. That deserves to change right away.

“One Little Word” showcases a talent who can sing and play the blues with the lightness of a capricious spring breeze, or with the depth of a deep, dark night. He sings and plays with the ease of a musician who is fully in control, but knows when to cut loose and hit with raw impact. His album benefits from the work of stellar guest musicians, especially producer Rick Holmstrom (guitarist for Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers) and keyboard maestros Fred Kaplan (of the Hollywood Fats Band) and Skip Edwards (longtime accompanist for Dwight Yoakam).

Brooks’ core band of guitarist Jeff Ross, drummer Ron Felton and bassist Tyler Pedersen is pretty special, too. On “So Damn Poor,” the finest song here (which is saying something), they play with the feel and acuity of Booker T. & the MGs backing Otis Redding, with Edwards sitting in as Booker T., and Brooks’ harmonica wistfully paralleling that lonely whistle of Redding’s during “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.”

Blues songs about being broke typically laugh off poverty to keep from crying. Brooks is all seriousness as he plays a fellow dangling above the abyss, holding on with his hands after his toehold on the middle class has been washed away in a mudslide of bills. His somber performance projects a muted woe that flies into moments of outrage.

Brooks’ versatility as a singer and songwriter enables him to set up a well-paced flow in which songs are paired to play off of one another and tell a story about how life’s frolics and joys coexist with its losses and torments.

He opens with salaciously winking double-entendre on the breezy swing-blues, “Fun to Visit,” then sings a couple of songs about murder, the guilt-stricken “Just Killed a Man,” and the mordantly humorous “Death Row Blues.”

He is blatantly offensive, but irresistibly exuberant, on “Back Where I Come From,” a tall tale about “women so ugly, made me jump and run.” Holmstrom sits in with satisfyingly dirtied Chuck Berry licks.

Before any women in the audience can take offense, Brooks has gotten all creamy smooth and caressing, singing “You’re the One I Love,” one of the album’s two Charles Brown-style, laid-back lounge-blues songs. It’s a joyfully erotic but respectful enactment of the seduction scene of everyone’s dreams.

The pattern of reversals and contrasts continues to the end. “Boogie Bill,” an insouciant celebration of a guy’s love for the blues (“Measures his records by the ton/Knows every song on every one”), pumps with a large appetite for living, with music as the main course. Brooks’ harmonica playing here is a nimble, laughing treat.

This gets us just to the midway point of the 13-song CD; many highlights are to follow. The dire “Jigsaw Puzzle” is a metaphorically rich song about a guy who despairs of making sense of his life: “I’m a jigsaw puzzle, baby, ain’t no picture on the box/Yes, and it makes me wonder, how many pieces already lost.” Musically, it echoes of B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” and the moody side of the early, Peter Green-led Fleetwood Mac.

Even when Brooks gives his imagination a rest and sings a routine cheated-on-blues scenario in “You’re Doin’ Me Wrong,” the seething heat of his vocal, rising from controlled anger to bellowed threats, brings it to life.

The title song is a lively, upbeat take on the human comedy--how one casual wrong remark can spoil an evening. In “1000 Miles,” Brooks nears the end of this rewarding blues odyssey with a song about lonely, fruitless romantic wandering rewarded at last by the contentment of a true love. But this is the blues, so love gets lost in the end--in a lovely, sad soul ballad, “First Day of Apri,” that benefits from some simple but telling nature imagery and a graceful melody that calls to mind Curtis Mayfield’s classic, “People Get Ready.”

“One Little Word” has everything a blues album should: It projects a distinctive personality, combines mastery of several traditional playing styles with a fresh point of view, and it is superbly sung and played. In one little word: essential.

(Available from KingAce Music Inc., P.O. Box 5305, Eugene, OR 97405; https://www.kingace.com.)

* The Freddie Brooks Band plays Thursday at the Blue Cafe, 210 Promenade, Long Beach. 9:30 p.m. $6. (562) 983-7111.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent).