When the ghosts rise from the backwoods swamps and churches, from the juke joints and railyards, and have themselves a party, they’ll cue up Luther Dickinson’s Blues & Ballads: A Folksinger’s Songbook: Volumes I & II as their soundtrack. With the help of The Cooperators, and some very smart choices he makes as producer, Dickinson tracks down-home themes of time immemorial; moonshine and mojo, mean ol’ winds and shakin’ yo mama, with the uncluttered clarity of a summer night on a Mississippi front porch. Friends like Mavis Staples, JJ Grey and Jason Isbell drop by, and Luther knows exactly how to accommodate his guests, but it’s the totality of the 21 cuts that impresses most. Songwriting traditions find respect and renewal. Instruments and voices are permitted to be real and unaffected. Lyrics are poetry, personal and eternal, revealing and repairing the hurt. As for those very smart choices, like fortifying the shuffle on “Bang Bang Lulu” with barrelhouse piano and a Bo Diddley beat or boiling it down to the bones of just Luther and his guitar on “Jackson,” they create a mood deeply, richly Southern without a trace of caricature. These aren’t standards reimagined. These are songs as modern as they are historical, carrying forward folk blues as an art form as they tell Dickinson’s story. In a sense, it’s a concept album spooled around the old blues adage of feeling good about feeling bad, and this is an album that feels really good. Just be ready for the ghosts.