Since his career went supernova with Silk Degrees, Boz Scaggs has continued to hone his craft, digging deeper into the blues, employing broader jazz brushstrokes — and nowhere is that fine tuning more obvious than on his terrific new album.

One part Allman Brothers, one part Levon Helm, and one part Howlin’ Wolf, Southern Hospitality is a jam band, a blues band, and a roots band — sometimes all inside of one knee-slapping throwback tune.

David Bowie and Eric Clapton return with albums that recall their glory years, while Shooter Jennings — both as a solo artist and as a producer with Fifth on the Floor — makes two appearances on our list.

The Cash Box Kings reanimate that moment when popular music — both black and white — began to coalesce into the rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic. It’s loud music, fun music, occasionally delving into darker themes, but possessing an impetuous, undeniable rhythm.

Like 461 Ocean Boulevard, but with better singing, Eric Clapton’s Old Sock is similarly thin on original songs, swerves into an amiable island-inflected vibe, and never gets too far outside of its super-mellow box.

For those who don’t know much about Duane Allman beyond the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East and Derek and the Dominoes’ Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, this ambitious seven-disc, 129-song set is a revelation.

A meditation on the most wrenching, soul-deep cries for love from the master of such things, Lonely and Blue illuminates Otis Redding’s way with a lyric in a manner that straight-forward greatest hits packages never have.

Neo-progger Steven Wilson’s stirring new album spends a second month in the reader’s poll at Something Else!, joined by new tributes to Wings’ Henry McCullough and the Band’s Levon Helm.

Boz Scaggs references some of the most distinctive, timeless R&B recordings of the 1970s, even as he continues exploring outward from that tradition on Memphis. Like Scaggs himself, it’s not easily pegged.

A sign of the times in this age of the download: John Oates of Hall and Oates says he will be releasing a new album — but only one song at a time, over the next year.