Lots of blues artists like to pretend like they’re on a mission when they’re playing, but this, the latest and probably the definitive Luther Allison live document, is a textbook example of the real thing. The legendary Allison was Chicago’s own heir to Otis Rush and Freddie King, yet he remained a prophet without honor in his own country, forced to go overseas to build a rep of his own. When he returned to the stage at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival, he did so with a vengeance. It’s that fire, born of frustration and disrespect, that he sprays through his guitar on this incredible 2-CD set.

The first disc consists mostly of that entire hour-long set, and while disc 2 captures, among other things, a fine night at Buddy Guy’s Legends club a few months after the festival, it’s the first CD that remains his finest hour on record. Everything here, subject be damned, burns with the fire of a man who knows he’s God and is determined to kill some heathens to prove it. His never-better lead lines don’t cry so much as they curse, spitting out bad news all over crowd pleasers like “Give Me Back My Wig” and “It Hurts Me Too” as well as ace Allison originals like “Bad Love” and “Big City.” The tour-de-force (in a performance full of them) is the nine-minute drinker’s apocalypse of “Cherry Red Wine,” where Allison follows his alkie friend down into the early grave and then resurrects him with a literally show-stopping tac nuke on his guitar neck. Second prize goes to his inventively clever B.B. King tribute medley of “Gambler’s Blues” and “Sweet Little Angel.”

Hard to believe that Luther had just gotten off the plane from an equally blazing French gig when he stepped on the stage that night in Chicago. Harder still to think that he would be consumed by cancer a mere two years later. Still, don’t let titles like “What Did I Do Wrong?” and “Will It Ever Change?” fool you—Luther Allison bestrode the stage, and his own life, like a colossus. These two CDs are all the evidence future blues scholars will ever need.