decade ago, when the still-thriving vinyl renaissance began, it was possible to follow the various new LPs released without much effort, because it was primarily the audiophile reissue labels --- Mobile Fidelity, Music Matters, Analogue Productions, Speakers Corner, Pure Pleasure -- that were doing the releasing. But over the intervening years, it has become impossible to keep up with all of the new reissue labels that have appeared, let alone their many new LPs. Craft Recordings is one of these new labels, having dropped its first release, Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane: The Complete 1957 Riverside Recordings, a three-record set, last year. Craft Recordings has a connection to a much earlier time, when the LP was the only medium extant for those interested in good sound. It is a spin-off of Concord Music and has quite a lineup of catalogues at its disposal, including Fantasy, Rounder, Stax, Milestone, Prestige, Riverside, Specialty, Sugar Hill, Vanguard and Vee-Jay Records, among many others.

These three recent releases from Craft Recordings shed light into that deep well of significant music. All three are gems from renowned bluesmen, two who often worked together and one who was discovered in middle age after playing music for pocket change.

Ted Hawkins (1936-1995) was a remarkable musician and performer, his rasp-edged voice and emotive vocal delivery embodying Frank Sinatra's maxim: to sing it I have to feel it. Watch Your Step was Hawkins' debut album, appearing after he had spent years performing on Venice Beach. His music was equal parts country blues, R&B and folk -- sometimes just Hawkins singing and playing guitar, others with horns, piano, bass drums and guitar as backing. All of the numbers here are originals, and on two his wife Elizabeth shares the vocal. If you came to Hawkins' music through his 1995 breakthrough The Next Hundred Years, you will find a lot to like in Watch Your Step, including the direct, atmospheric sound.

Buddy Guy has been busy recording in the new millennium (Blues Singer, from 2003, is a bona-fide audiophile classic), with a new release earlier this year. Guy is a blues guitarist of the first rank, and his brand of the blues comes from Chicago and the Mississippi Delta -- a deft melding of traditional and modern influences, including rock 'n' roll. A Man & The Blues was an album of its time, displaying the chugging rhythms of R&B buoyed by a horn section on select cuts. But it's when Guy gets down to business, as on the percolating title cut and "Worry, Worry," which are also two of the longest tracks on the album, that A Man & The Blues earns its title. These more sparse numbers give the best indication of the recording quality, which allows you to hear into the composition of the tracks, right down to the noise floor.

Junior Wells (1934-1998) was a harmonica master who also possessed a wailing voice perfect for the R&B-tinged playing on Coming at You. This is a covers collection with a full backing band that includes Buddy Guy on guitar and jazz trumpeter Clark Terry as one-third of the horn section. Most of the cuts are around three minutes in length, and in some cases, as with Sonny Boy Williamson's "Stop Breaking Down" and the Junior Parker/Sam Philips classic "Mystery Train," the brevity makes for appetizer versions of the musical meals I wish were here instead. The power of this recording comes from Wells's singing and playing, aided by clear, detailed sound that, as with the Buddy Guy LP, gives insight into each cut's construction.

Stickers on the front of the Buddy Guy and Junior Wells LPs proudly proclaim Craft Recordings' use of "the original analog masters" as source materials, while lacquers for the Ted Hawkins LP were cut from digital files. All three were pressed at Memphis Record Pressing. Flat and quiet, these LPs uphold the extremely high standards that record pressing enjoys today, perhaps because LPs are pressed in small batches, perhaps because companies that endeavor to manufacture records nowadays are under pressure (pun intended) from the likes of QRP, RTI and Pallas to keep quality up.