Many of you probably have stashed away in a drawer somewhere around your home the old 45 rpm records. If you have some from the 50s and early 60s you will have Elvis' grinding out "Hound Dog," Buddy Holly and the Crickets' hiccupping "Peggy Sue," Chuck Berry's joyful hot licks in "Maybellene," the Coasters' slapstick tour de force "Charlie Brown," the mournful "Tears On My Pillow" by Little Anthony and the Imperials, the impenetrable and probably scandalous "Louie, Louie" by the Kingsmen, and the teenaged gropings of the Paris Sisters' "I Love How You Love Me."

Here and there in these dusty stacks, one can find an occasional recording by the great blues master Jimmy Reed. A share-cropper's son, Reed brought the throbbing harmonica-and-guitar-driven black rhythm-and-blues of the Mississippi …