A piano and a voice, nothing else—done right, it never gets old. Catherine Russell and Sean Mason do it right. They first recorded together two years ago on Russell’s eighth album, Send for Me. By that time, she’d not only sung with a roll-call of giants, including David Bowie, Steely Dan and Levon Helm, but had also, in her solo career, established herself as a foremost interpreter of songs dating from the first half of the 20th century. That era, those styles, were long familiar to her—her father, Luis Russell, was a big-band leader who had worked with Louis Armstrong; her mother, Carline Ray, was a singer with a group called the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. Whatever she sings, Catherine Russell gets to the heart of a song and takes you with her. And her duets with pianist Mason here are imbued with a soulfulness that spans time and setting. “A Porter’s Song (To a Chambermaid),” which opens their collaboration, was written by James P. Johnson and Andy Razaf in 1930, and, here, it’s just the prettiest thing—dramatic and elegant. But when it gives way to “I Don’t Need No Doctor,” known to rockers thanks to Ray Charles, Humble Pie or perhaps New Riders of the Purple Sage, and done here as a burning uptempo blues, then you know there’s something else happening. It’s easy to imagine hearing some of these tunes turning up in a saloon scene in a 1940s noir, sung and played by Russell and Mason just the way they are here. There’s a coziness and a coolness to it all and a warmth that makes you want to return to it again and again.