TITLE: Two Men With The Blues

ARTISTS: WILLIE NELSON AND WYNTON MARSALIS

STARS: 4 1/2 OUT OF 5 STARS

SOUNDS LIKE: The blues done up in high brow jazz fashion.

Part of the charm of the blues is its rawness. It’s been called the devil’s music, down and barefoot dirty. It’s three chords dunked muddy water deep in emotion.

Gussy the blues up too much and it loses some of that earthy, visceral emotion. It’s no longer the blues as we’ve come to know it but something else entirely. Now that in no way means the blues becomes less entertaining. It’s just that when you add sax, trumpet and a few jazz chords, it beings to operate in a different area of your musical soul.

“Two Men with the Blues” a musical collaboration between Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson works in that other realm. It’s the part that not quite blues and not quite jazz but tastefully placed somewhere between both. It’s that music that the band plays late when everyone’s buzzing and creativity flows from the bandstand like the smell of fresh poured whiskey.

Here it’s a two night gig in January 2007 at Jazz at Lincoln Center that was simply billed as “Willie Nelson Sings the Blues.” But with Nelson backed up by the Wynton Marsalis Quintet, it turned into something more, a mythical meeting between two legendary musical figures sharing a common love of the blues.

The 10 song CD opens with “Bright Lights, Big City,” a bluesy shuffle with wailing harmonica and Marsalis’s spirited blowing.

Nelson turns “Caldonia” the late Louis Jordan’s signature tune into Boogie Woogie romp. A fun tune anyway it gets new life here.

“Stardust” and “Basin Street Blues” sound more jazz than blues here.

My favorite is “Georgia on my Mind.” The Hoagy Carmichael standard just seems tailor made for Nelson’s weary interpretation. He makes it sound like more of a late night conversation over a candlelit table with Marsalis providing a smoky and solemn backdrop.

It took me awhile to appreciate “Two Men with the Blues.” Maybe because my first few listens were in my car. I popped the CD in to my home player late one night and that’s when I got it.

I recommend any jazz or blues lover get it too. But it won’t be available until August.