Juke Joint Caravan Ferries House of Blues to Its Roots

The exterior of the House of Blues in West Hollywood incorporates corrugated tin from a structure that used to stand at the Mississippi crossroads of Highways 61 and 49--the crossroads where myth says Robert Johnson sold his soul and the blues were born.

Rarely, if ever, has the club hosted music truer to those roots than it did Thursday with the Fat Possum label’s Juke Joint Caravan of three north Mississippi veterans.

Scheduled headliner R.L. Burnside was absent due to illness, but none in the sparse crowd seemed disappointed by the sets of Robert Belfour, Paul “Wine” Jones and T-Model Ford.

With his not-quite-in-tune acoustic guitar and a voice of bourbon and molasses, Belfour, 60, dragged such urban blues as “Further on Up the Road” and Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” back to the Mississippi soil--and to some extent back to African origins, the low-note drones and moans recalling Moroccan gnawa music. With his first album just out, Belfour is a highly personal performer and a living link to such progenitors as Charley Patton and Fred McDowell.

Jones, in his mid 50s the youngster of the three, was more “sophisticated,” but only in relative terms.

Playing electric guitar and backed by the forceful, steady rhythms of young drummer Brian Barry and bassist Eric Deaton, his sound came off as the primal blueprint for such landmark power trios as Cream and Band of Gypsys, but without the showy soloing.

It was raw, and it rocked.

Ford, in his closing set, split the difference between the other two.

The 78-year-old late bloomer was at his most dynamic when joined by Barry and Deaton, locking into propulsive, idiosyncratic one-chord grooves, their implied menace belied by Ford’s friendly smile.

This wasn’t a night of virtuoso chops, but rather pure, smoldering feeling--an important reminder to blues players and fans that it’s not the flash that counts, it’s the heat.