Consumer Guide Album

Corey Harris: Fish Ain't Bitin' [Alligator, 1997]
After a debut that established his mastery of the Delta idiom, this young black Denver native does something really hard--proves he's big enough to fool around with it. The intermittent New Orleans polyphony is as warm as the tuba of fellow National steel-bodied adept Taj Mahal. And as much as Harris's cross-rhythms and vocal panoply honor his readings of the classics, his virtuosity springs to life on originals where a catfish farm saps the Red River or Mumia and Rodney King leave him nowhere to take his trunk. A−