Editor's Note: This review is part of a series of albums and artists nominated for the 2007 Blues Music Awards (full list of nominees). This album is nominated for Historical Album of the Year.

Who are the “Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen?” Who would have the audacity to gloss themselves with that title, considering just how many great bluesmen trace their roots back to the Mississippi Delta? Pinetop Perkins, Robert Lockwood Jr., Honeyboy Edwards, and Henry James Townsend may or may not have had anything to do with choosing that title, but they sure as hell have spent a lifetime earning it. Historical album? That might be the understatement of the millennium!

Pinetop Perkins is a national treasure, most famous for the years he spent on the road touring with Muddy Waters. The first thing most people mention when bringing up either Lockwood or Honeyboy are their respective relationships with icon Robert Johnson. I mention it because if I don't, someone else will. Both men carved out vast legacies of their own, legacies rich enough to make their association with the blues' most celebrated name a footnote in their careers. Lockwood is one of the guys who played with everyone before forging a solo career. Townsend was a major player in the St. Louis blues scene, influenced by Roosevelt Sykes and Lonnie Johnson.

On October 16, 2004, The Blue Shoe Project brought these four legends together to put on a show in Dallas, Texas. This isn't really the kind of album you review so much as you thank God for its existence. That night, the performers' ages ranged from 89 to 94. Sadly, two of the “Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen,” Lockwood and Townsend, are no longer with us. Both men passed away in 2006. You thank the heavens above that someone not only brought these four men together for an evening of blues, but that they also had the good sense to record and release the results.