This is less a jam session than the Heavyweight Championship of harp masters, a real old-fashioned head-cutting where the names aren’t so mentioned as intoned, announcer-style, with echo: James Cotton. Charlie Musselwhite. Billy Branch. Sugar Ray Norcia. (Hell, they even sound like boxers.) And all four bring their inimitable styles to the ring, personalities alive in their licks. Charlie’s the finesse fighter, floating like a butterfly and stinging like a king bee. Sugar Ray’s the scholar, hitting only the notes that need to be and gauging everyone else. Branch is the brash upstart, the power puncher who puts his head down and plows through the music, and James Cotton is the legend, dictating the rhythm all on his own and working the others to keep up.

The song selection’s a little odd, balancing originals with covers no one would think to do (Tommy Dorsey songs? “The Hucklebuck?”) but it all comes together, with the fine backing band laying down foundation and the harp heroes letting fly in two-and-three-way cockfights. Evergreens like “Route 66” provide your daily requirement of blues all by themselves, and Cotton’s spotlight turn on “Hucklebuck” is an immediate juke-joint staple, but the finale is the real cool overdose, a 12-minute original grind called “Harp To Harp” where all four face off at once, Kid Bangham’s tasty guitar egging them on like Don King at a press conference. Like many matches, it’s over too quickly, but don’t worry; you may only feel like someone’s bitten your ear off.