Walter “Furry” Lewis and B.K. “Black Ace” Turner are footnotes in blues history, two slide guitarists with wildly different styles. Lewis was more the performer than the technician, his claim to fame coming as a balladeer in the 1930s. His soft-spoken, understated manner fell out of style, and he retired from music, though he recorded briefly for Victor and Vocalion before giving up his guitar to work for the state. Fourth and Beale (named after the address of his home where his recording was made) captures Furry Lewis as the storyteller, a purveyor of laid-back blues full of creative misreadings (“Nero My God to Thee”) and between-song chit chat. The album is ragged; the first few times I listened to it I didn’t like it, but the homeyness is appealing in places. “Just a Little Fun” is so slight it’s hardly even there, but its looseness probably summarizes Lewis’ appeal better than anything else on this recording. That song is followed by “Goin’ Back to Gary,” which Furry manages to sustain for nearly eight minutes—his personality takes over and you’re willing to follow despite his wanderings.

Like Fourth and Beale, most of I’m the Boss Card in Your Hand was recorded at home, but B.K. Turner is the professional throughout; his playing is consistently fluid, and at times he gets the Robert Johnson compliment—he sounds like two guitarists are playing at once. Turner switches easily from bass riff to strum and back, never losing tempo and always keeping the melody in focus. The liner notes (very informative, as is customary with Arhoolie) tell us B.K. Turner is one of the only “flat Hawaiian guitar style” blues players to be recorded. This album is, it seems, nearly his complete recorded works. We are given the six sides he cut for Decca in the late ‘30s (which were the basis for foreign appreciation of his work), with the twenty-two remaining tracks recorded in 1960 in Fort Worth. Some recordings made for Vocalion in 1938 are not here, though one was said to have been released “obscurely on Melotone” at the time. Of I’m the Boss Card in Your Hand and Fourth and Beale, the former is certainly the finer recording. Spend your hard-earned bucks on it and you’ll get an education in flat Hawaiian guitar playing.