The Commercial Appeal, February 21, 2004

Hemphill Delights on Live Double-disc Hootenanny by Bill Ellis

Jessie Mae Hemphill is back. First we got arguably the best compilation yet of her classic 1970s and '80s work on the recent High Water/Inside Sounds release Get Right Blues. Now we catch up with the legendary blues woman today on the delightful double disc Dare You to Do It Again, a hootenanny of a session that pairs Hemphill with a number of guests from ex-Squirrel Nut Zippers frontman Jimbo Mathus (these days a Clarksdale, Miss., resident) to Sharde Thomas with the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band.

Recorded live last year at Sherman Cooper's farm in Como, Miss., the album - to be released Tuesday - doesn't document so much as revel in every spontaneous note (you can even hear a phone ring at one point). A companion DVD will be available in March.

Still singing if not playing (a 1993 stroke all but put an end to that), Hemphill does a sincere, at times touching, job of leading the musicians through many a traditional gospel number, including "Old Time Religion," "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "I Shall Not Be Moved." The highlight, all 12 minutes of it, comes in what sounds like a duet between Memphis boogie great Robert Belfour and Hemphill (liner notes don't identify players on each song) for the album's solid rock of a rocker, "God Is Good to Me."