On High Heeled Blues, Rory Block is exactly what a lot of people wish Bonnie Raitt still was: a terrific singer performing mostly folk music and blues with sparse, acoustic accompaniment. Block has had her own brushes with big-time record companies – an overproduced first album on RCA, a fine R&B disc called Intoxication on Chrysalis and an indifferent followup–but she's also played with the Woodstock Mountain Revue and, in 1976, cut an eclectic, largely acoustic LP for the independent Blue Goose label.

Returning to the independent world via Rounder, Block has gone back to the roots of Sixties folk music to record traditional songs, blues and gospel tunes (by Robert Johnson, Skip James, the Carter Family, et al.) in very simple guitar, piano and dulcimer arrangements. There are also a few originals. Coproduced by John Sebastian, High Heeled Blues may not be terribly ambitious, but it's thoroughly gorgeous. (RS 365)

DON SHEWEY