Tasha Taylor is the daughter of Stax soul legend Johnnie Taylor, and far from shying away from her heritage she’s embraced it fully, carrying the torch for soul-­blues without a hint of “Disco Lady.” Indeed, her first two independent albums established her firmly in the mold, replete with a cover of Dad’s signature hit “Who’s Making Love,” but her first album for Ruf, Honey for the Biscuit, sounds like her real debutante ball: improved songwriting, better production, a surer sense of self, and a thicker blues streak running through a baker’s dozen of originals. Recorded in Nashville, it sounds more and more like her father’s glory days—on Malaco, that is, where he took up residence during his Eighties comeback. (Memphis horn charts aside.)

Tasha’s got nothing more on her mind lyrically than that old blues standby, the ins and outs of bad love and sexual obsession, but despite the fact that she’s changed the hue of her father’s soul-­blues ever so slightly to blues­-soul, the younger Taylor picks up on the big­-picture personal feminism labels like Malaco were hinting at in the early ’70s; you can hear echoes of her dad, Jean Knight, and Betty Wright in her delivery, but there also seems to be a more modern streak of wounded survivalism in there that sounds like nothing so much as Lauryn Hill facing down the patriarchy. Add in the support of a first- class backup band—Stevie Wonder’s bassist Nathan Watts is here, though Don Wyatt’s Wurlitzer is her best counterpoint— and guest shots from Keb’ Mo’, her old boss Tommy Castro, and Robert Randolph (check out his lap steel on the update of her own “Little Miss Suzie”), and there’s no reason Tasha shouldn’t already be considered one of soul-­blues’ greatest living divas. She’s not the philosopher her dad was, quite, but give it time.