All My Life

Charles Brown slips into the blues as if they were a comfortable shoe. His whisper-soft baritone brings a wry elegance to stories of hard luck and bad love, while his fingers coax boogie-woogie inflections from the piano. Although Brown’s greatest success came on the R&B charts in the ’50s, he’s made a graceful comeback, performing on Bonnie Raitt’s most recent tour and releasing All My Life. Some of the tunes have been part of Brown’s repertoire for 40 years; all of them have a lived-in quality that comes from his relaxed singing and playing. The blues don’t get any classier. A-