The Very Best Of... + Jelly Roll Morton

This pair of digitally re-mastered collections are both welcome and timely. Damn fine performers of Texas folk/blues and jazz piano respectively, Hopkins and Morton are time travellers who betray not an ounce of jetlag, despite their millennial's end travels.

Lightnin' Hopkins is by far the more accessible of the two, a heady cocktail of Townes Van Zandt, Dr. John and Robert Johnson, with enough charisma to live long after he's shuffled off this mortal coil. These 16 tracks span the length and breadth of his recording career, which remarkably stretches across four decades, and includes some fine company along the way (Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Joe Williams, for starters). All human life is here, most of it bawdy and erotically-charged, with Hopkins boogieing and grinning his way right past the censors. As introductions go, this one beats anything you'll encounter in the personals.

Jelly Roll Morton, or Ferdinand Joseph Lemott, as he is known to the tax man is quite another basket of catfish. According to legend, Morton was a pimp, a blackguard and a New Orleans creole who had few qualms about broadcasting his racist views. Still, lend even a cocked ear to these piano rolls and you can't but marvel at their intricacy, their nonchalant genius.

All but one of the dozen tracks here are Morton originals and they swoop and dive across borders of style and tempo with an agility that'd put a smile on the face of Jesse Owens.

Given the early date of many of the recordings, the quality strains at ears more accustomed to pristine high fidelity.

Nonetheless Jelly Roll Stomp, with its soupcon of 'New Orleans Joys', its flourish of 'Granpa's Spells' and its cocky 'Perfect Rag', sets its stall out under the sun for the pleasure of anyone with the remotest interest in finding out where everyone from Georgie Fame to Dr. John got their licks.

Maybe Jelly Roll's no longer around, but we can still savour his genius.