Bernard Allison has always been proud to carry the surname of his famous soul-blues defining dad Luther.

After all, he more or less ran the last few years of his father’s career, leading his band on tour, producing Luther’s last few albums and generally making sure to protect the brand.

Coming from a different generation, his brand of blues swings with even more soul than his father’s and rocks with a purpose. But he’s still nobody’s firebrand looking to make his own name. He’s more a son carrying on the family business by not fixing anything that ain’t broke. He even plays his dad’s guitar, as if it were a rifle left over from a war still going on.

The main difference, which you can easily hear on his cover of Luther’s “Move from the Hood,” is that while Bernard was raised on Chicago blues, he plays blues guitar like a Texan and sings like he’s stranded halfway between Jackson and Memphis.

The middle of the album delivers some straight big-city blues, including the cover of Freddie King’s “I’d Rather Be Blind,” and there are also two originals, one shuffle and one strut, that slow things down enough to allow the whole band room to stretch out. (And that does mean everybody: the younger Allison designed this disc as a collection of moods, not guitar pyro, and so when he does solo, he keeps it brief and relatively low-key.)

The album’s other half veers between late ’70s soul and heartland roots rock of a similar vintage, and it’s merely Bernard’s skills behind the mic and up the neck that categorize them as blues.

Which is as it should be.

Soul-blues is under new management.