The record buyers responsible for making a Robert Johnson reissue outsell most new releases last year delivered a strong message to the recording industry. Many music fans are sick of the mechanistic fluff they've been fed and are turning to roots music in the absence of a mainstream alternative. The industry has responded with a flood of reissues, but Elektra's American Explorer Series is the first concerted attempt by a major label to mine the resources of contemporary American roots music. The line's first releases indicate just how rich the mother lode is. Each of these records is a superlative example of its genre.

Boozoo Chavis is the pick of the litter. The album is a definitive performance from one of the few remaining links to the original roots of zydeco. Chavis is a purist whose accordion playing doesn't correspond to standard configurations of meter and song structure. When one of his sons, who plays in the band with him, complained about Boozoo's unusual approach to "Forty One Days," he replied: "If it's wrong, do it wrong, y'know wit' me, follow me. If I'm wrong, you wrong, too.... I can't promise you it gonna be like it was, but I can promise you it gonna be better."

Unlike many other zydeco players who have incorporated external influences to make the music more commercial, Chavis treats every performance like a Saturday-night bayou fish fry. The emotional fire of his delivery collars his listeners and puts them in a dancing mood, urged on by his shouted lyrics, barked out in a Creole patois of French, English and, well, animal noises. "Zydeco Hee Haw," a mule-calling holler adapted to zydeco, brings the whole family to a whistling, howling frenzy as the infectious beat rattles the floor.

The fun doesn't stop with Boozoo, either. Saxophonist Vernard Johnson's record goes about as far as gospel music can venture without taking the plunge into secularism. Johnson doesn't mind remaking the pop-gospel hits "Oh Happy Day" and "Wade in the Water"; he admits that his brand of gospel has more than just a little in common with the blues in his introduction to "When Troubles Burden Me Down"; and he invokes the soul of King Curtis on the funk strut "Lord Help Me to Hold Out." The backup vocalists may be singing "Hallelujah" on "Call Him on My Horn," but Johnson sounds like he's playing a wilder rendition of "Soul Makossa."

Charlie Feathers is a rockabilly legend, one of the original Sun artists and a major influence on Elvis Presley's early career. Perhaps in part because of his unique vocal delivery, which runs a bizarre range from the bass growls of Johnny Cash to the high-register hiccups of Buddy Holly, Feathers has never really caught on, despite making records for various independent labels over the last forty years. This collection showcases his strengths masterfully. Feathers finger-pops his way through "When You Come Around," delivers a medium-tempo trucker's tearjerker in "Pardon Me Mister," wails at the moon in "Defrost Your Heart" and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end with his version of Hank Williams's "(I Don't Care) If Tomorrow Never Comes." But his greatest moments come on the driving blues and rockabilly numbers like "Mean Woman Blues," "Uh Huh Honey," "Cootzie Coo" and "You're Right, I'm Left, She's Gone."

Jimmie Dale Gilmore is part of the Texas-based songwriting collective that also produced Joe Ely and Butch Hancock. After Awhile is an even stronger group of songs than the two albums he released on High Tone Records. Gilmore stamps himself as a great American songwriter on material like "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown," "Treat Me Like a Saturday Night," "Chase the Wind," "Blue Moon Waltz," "These Blues" and "Midnight Train."

Johnnie Johnson is at once the most important discovery of the series and the most difficult to get into focus. Johnson, in effect, co-wrote all of Chuck Berry's greatest compositions by providing the musical arrangements to Berry's lyrics – after the two cooled their collaboration in the early Sixties, Berry ceased to come up with significant new material. But Johnson is the consummate sideman, a medium for musical expression rather than a charismatic group leader, so his solo project had to be carefully assembled around him by respected peers. But what peers – Keith Richards and Eric Clapton on guitars, most of NRBQ as the backing band. Johnson shows off his considerable skills as a blues piano player and surprising ability as a singer, while his special friends clearly have a hell of a good time providing the context.

If these five releases indicate pleasures to come, we have much to look forward to from this bold series. (RS 611)

JOHN SWENSON