Blues Heaven

Koko Taylor sings "Blues Heaven" like a woman who has earned the right to name her ancestors. Her voice — the great gravel-and-brass instrument of Chicago blues, a rasp that could strip varnish — carries the song's roll call of departed players with more defiance than mourning. The arrangement is late-seventies Chess: horn section punching the turnarounds, organ pads swelling under the chorus, a rhythm section that swings hard rather than shuffling loosely, everything mixed bigger and cleaner than the label's fifties work. Willie Dixon's hand is behind the material, and the title would eventually become the name of his foundation, which gives the recording a strange retroactive weight — it's a song about a blues afterlife that turned into an institution. Taylor's phrasing is her signature move: she lands slightly behind the beat, holds a note until it frays, then bites off the line's end. The emotional register isn't grief but continuity, the assertion that the tradition has a destination and its people are already there waiting. She sounds less like a mourner than a woman announcing that she intends to arrive eventually and expects a good seat. Good for a Sunday afternoon, volume up, when you want the music to feel populated rather than lonely.