Rock history is decorated with the eviscerated careers of once promising young guitarists who crashed into the cul de sac of unsustainable ambition and greedy management. The “lucky” ones who achieve the stardom predicted for them are typically forced to perform the same tricks over and over again or be declared irrelevant. What makes Derek Trucks so unique is not simply how good he is but that he understands the key to being a great musician is to do it for the music, not the stardom. While less musically talented teens went for the brass ring, Trucks was content to serve his apprenticeship in the family band with uncle Butch, the Allman Brothers. The ABB is the Count Basie band of rock, an organization with a monumental book of tunes that multiple generations of great musicians have animated. Derek Trucks is the latest of them, and his sound is rich in unconventional source material, from the formal beauty of the Jeff Beck/George Martin vision of fusion jazz, Blow By Blow, to the spiritual depth of Indian classical music, which his resonant, gliding slide guitar work often touches upon. The politically charged soul jazz of Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “Volunteered Slavery” opens the album.