It’s hard to believe that Tony Joe White, who passed away unexpectedly in October, had never before made an all-blues album. Even at his commercial peak as a songwriter and recording artist, turning out classics like his sole Top-10 hit “Polk Salad Annie” (famously covered by Elvis) and “Rainy Night in Georgia” (Brook Benton), the blues was never far from the surface of his work. Yet Bad Mouthin’ is where he finally tosses everything else overboard. Making nearly all of the sounds within on his own, White applies his swampy guitar and weather-beaten vocals to a mix of originals and covers, the last of which, “Heartbreak Hotel,” is so utterly transformed as to force a reconsideration of the tune—think Robert Johnson or Charley Patton, not Presley, and even then, no description could do it justice. Cornerstone blues like John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom” and Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man,” as well as the traditional “Baby Please Don’t Go,” stripped down to their rawest and most minimal, are backwoods back-porch all the way. White’s own songs aren’t any less unadulterated: The title track and “Sundown Blues” place the singer into romantic entanglements (make that un-entanglements) that only a bare-bones blues could turn into the unassailable truth, while on “Cool Town Woman,” with White’s whispery growl and six strings stretched over a slab of wood, feels as if it should have been unearthed on a century-old, beat-up 78.