Champion Jack Dupree

An expatriate at 50, the overrecorded last of the barrelhouse pianists laid down some of his best music in sweet home New Orleans before he went back to Hamburg to die at 82: hyped supersession, cockeyed follow-up, posthumous farewell. I've always preferred the follow-up, in part because it begins with the adoptee's lament "They Gave Me Away," in part because it seems so uncalculated and associative--an entertainer made not born letting down what hair he's got left because he's too old to play it safe anymore. All the wildest stuff from that one is here, together with the tightest stuff from the debut and the most responsive stuff from the farewell. Songster blues. Decrepitude feeling its oats. (Grade: A-)