The debt that Marcia ball owes to the rich New Orleans piano tradition pays substantial dividends on Blue House, her first album since 1989. Though based in Austin, Texas, Ball was raised on the Louisiana border, where the native keyboard styles seem to have become second nature to her. If nothing else, the album-opening anthem "Red Beans" and Ball's own "Sparkle Paradise" establish her as a most accomplished Professor Longhair acolyte; she plays with the sort of rollicking spirit that can't be taught but must be felt.

What's most impressive about Blue House, however, is how much Ball has grown as a songwriter and singer. From her grounding in good-time blues, Ball has developed a signature style so transparently sincere that it seems like a window to her soul. There's a conversational warmth in her singing that more than compensates for her lack of range, and her phrasing never succumbs to blues-mama clichés. Her songs ring with the truth of experience rather than rustle the dust of bluesy revivalism, as in the balladry of "Why Do I" and "One of a Kind," which holds its own with the recent best of Bonnie Raitt. The album's centerpiece, "St. Gabriel," gives the emotional depth of "St. James Infirmary" a contemporary feminist twist in its taut lyric of domestic violence and self-preservation.

Throughout Blue House, Ball receives superb support from her road-tested band, with guitarist Steve Williams and saxophonist Mark Kazanoff bringing a particular charge to the music. On the uptempo fare, Ball and band offer a playful nod toward "Sea Cruise" on "Down the Road" and power their way through Joe Ely's "Fingernails" with all the propulsion this piano pounder demands. Such fare should rock the clubs where Ball remains a hard-touring favorite, but the most moving music on Blue House is more intimate, more reflective, more indicative of the openhearted grace of her mature artistry. (RS 701)

DON MCLEESE