As Curtis Wheeler, a/k/a Rooster, explains on the title cut of this classic blues outing, “I was born in Mississippi, raised down in New Orleans; I ate red beans and rice, made love to a Cajun queen.”  So how would you describe the music he makes? Mississippi Delta electric blues meets Big Easy soul and musicianship.

The result is a brand of stone-cold originality that makes even the blandest-sounding blues arrangement sit up and bark at the moon.

Check out the single live cut on the program here, “Cell Phone Blues,” recorded at The Bubba Mac Shack on New Jersey’s south shore. The format is traditional electric blues, but the musicianship, as evidenced by extended blues solos, is more than a cut or two above average, making the track a real stand-out.

But so is the next track, “I’m a Stranger in Your Town,” a fairly simple blues lyric backed by a hyper-shuffle rhythm and some complex, hard driving horn charts. What comes next? The romantic ballad “Jo Ann,” a slowed-down blues that borrows heavily from synthesizer-laden soul, but ends with a doo-wop chorus.

And never mind that the last three tracks are straight-out Nashville country blues, complete with pedal-steel guitar and falsetto yodeling.

The Rooster method will never catch you napping -- a showman first and foremost, Rooster’s fresh take on the blues genre begins just where other blues bands leave off.