Dad's dig music. I'm a dad, and if I didn't work at THEE record store (and already have them), these'd be on my Father's Day list:

Booker T – Potato Hole

This album has it ALL. The funky soul of classic Booker T, rocking guitar of Neil Young and it grooves to the backing of the Drive-By Truckers, poignantly tying together the fact that Patterson Hood's father, as a Muscle Shoals studio musician, was an integral part of the southern soul sound, that Booker T. spawned. See how this Father's Day gift has several levels to it?!

Ramblin' Jack Elliott – A Stranger Here

This is an album of blues covers. I thought I never needed to hear some of these songs again (they'd been covered SO much!), but they've absolutely been made fresh by Jack's gut-bucket voice, the

musicianmanship of Van Dyke Parks and David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) and Joe Henry's production. From the liner notes of A Stranger Here, Henry writes: "I pitched the idea that he interpret country blues music from the Depression era of his birth… songs as dark, funny and strange as is he and the times that produced them, and also ones that still resonate in these turbulent days." It's amazing how someone nearly 80 years old can interpret these aged classics in such a contemporary manner. I guess that's why we call them "artists".

This article appears in Jun 17-23, 2009.