They are worth a listen, and maybe even a download. (These are different from the tracks on Black Rat Swing, of which I have the CD.) For anyone unfamiliar with Jo Ann Kelly, DO NOT LOOK AT HER PICTURE, and just assume she wasn't a schoolteacher from Kent or Sussex or wherever it was, and work under the assumption she was someone who genuinely worried about the levees breaking or how to get to Chicago.
Like most blues singers, her early ones are raw and unfiltered and the later ones are shiny and polished and unremarkable. Though, of course, since she was a schoolteacher from Kent or Sussex or somewhere - oh, I wasn't going to mention that - the early ones probably required more artifice than the later ones. But whatever "authenticity" means, Jo Ann Kelly had it in large quantities. She was a huge figure in the British Blues Boom, and it's sad she was not around longer.
Download here: archive org Jo Ann Kelly
Download here: archive org Jo Ann Kelly
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