Like his soulmate, the late, great Ted Hawkins, Grandpa Elliott’s specialized genius lies in exhilarating simplicity belying the hassle that refined it. According to The New York Times, he play-acts being blinder and crazier than in actuality. Sad, then, how he feels obligated to put on a freak show, however genteel, to get his music across. On the other hand, he’s been working these angles since somewhere around the Johnson Administration.

Sugar Sweet’s liner notes tell us he gets up as early as 4 a.m. and stakes out the corner of Toulouse and Royal in the French Quarter. There he does his thing with a lot of guitar, a bit of harmonica and a smooth voice with a knowing waver on the held notes. Elliott Small, old enough to collect Social Security (if he’d spent his decades working a regular job), sees and feels all of humanity from his perch. Then he takes it in and brings it all on home.

Grandpa Elliott apparently does not write and certainly does not need to. Jimmy Reed’s “Baby, What You Want Me to Do” rolls on a hip-shifting boogie groove with a surprising reggae tease worked into the carefully-accented offbeats. Elliot plays with the words two-thirds of the way through, but after a deft haiku of a harmonica break, his brow furrows (“I see ya got’cha man with ya but that’s alright”) and that smile collapses into pursed lips.

The gospel numbers, by contrast, ring out solid and righteous and even warm—a quality which doesn’t usually mix with righteousness. I’d applaud more loudly if I didn’t get the uneasy feeling that the singer hasn’t learned to sell redemption as one more favor out of his seasoned, sturdy ice cream cart. But let no one say he doesn’t know his market.