BoL is baaaad. We start with deep, dark acoustic blues from Furry Lewis, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Willie Johnson and Barbeque Bob. Then we jump knee deep into contemporary Afrobeat from Wunmi. And we end up with Simply Red covering Gregory Isaacs, Harold Melvin, and Barry White, plus a little Coltrane. This week is a smorgasbord of black music.

Gil Scott-Heron redux. (Y’all know we love us some Gil.) We follow with contributions from two emerging artists: Heidi Martin out of DC and Esquizito out of New Orleans. This week on BoL we’re enjoying beautiful music other than what one normally hears.

We start off with a consideration of Funkadelic‘s Cosmic Slop album. We follow with an appreciation of Olu Dara. We close with 10 versions of "My Funny Valentine" featuring Carmen McRae, Eddie Harris, Sarah Vaughan, Gerry Mulligan & Chet Baker, Rachelle Ferrell, Johnny Hartman, Etta James, Miles Davis, Eve Cornelius and Dianne Reeves.

New Orleans music this week: Rebirth Brass Band, Kermit Ruffins and Terence Blanchard. Plus there’s Me’Shell Ndegeocello and an investigation of Leonard Cohen‘s mysterious "Suzanne" by Diane Reeves, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack and Rene Marie.