Asie Payton spent the years preceding his 1997 death plowing the fields of Holly Ridge, Mississippi and playing guitar Saturday nights in the town's supermarket- cum- jukejoint. Although his gigs barely supported a lifestyle well below the poverty line, Payton rarely left his hometown long enough to tour and refused to see the logic of recording his work for resale. Although Fat Possum Records managed to record barely an album's worth of Payton live at Junior Kimbrough's place, all attempts to release the material before Payton's death failed.

Quite obviously, Payton's posthumous debut, Worried, is garnered from those live recordings. Although they were originally intended as demos, they provide an egregiously short but extremely potent taste of Payton's vanished genius. With the call of simplicity as beauty at its core, Worried captures Payton energizing a set of traditional blues numbers with his austere, economical guitar work.

Matched against these basic blues riffs and his unadorned playing, Payton's vocals shine. Blessed with a thin, powerful voice that immediately flattens others to cardboard, Payton melds the uncanny timing of funk and the strength of soul to his own blues backbone. When he sings, "It's three o' clock in the morning and I can't close my eyes/ I can't find my baby and I can't be satisfied," it's not that he sings with the authority of someone who has felt the emotion, but rather that he sings the emotion itself. "Worried Life," a rollicking blues lament further bolstered by Payton's jaw dropping vocals, has quickly become the song most likely to disturb my neighbors. People-- and I'm talkin' truth here-- this disc only leaves my stereo to travel with me on my journey to spread the Gospel of Asie.

While remixes have historically proven a repeated stumbling block for Fat Possum artists, this album fares better than most, going one for two. While "Asie's Jam" rubs elbows amicably with rolling band numbers like "Nobody But You" and "Skinny Legs and All" and serves as a dancable reminder that Worried was recorded in the '90s as opposed to the '50s or '60s, the forced and ungainly remix of "I Love You" sucks a little bit o' ass, issuing the album's lone missed note.

Worried is perhaps 1999's most surprising album thus far and a gentle reminder to those apt to fret over the relevance of popular music in our society. Payton played in anonymity his entire life for little more than the reward of making music. So long as talents continue carrying his torch, whether in the hills of Mississippi or in the pub around the corner, we can all rest easy. Billy Bragg was wrong-– capitalism can't kill music. God bless you, Asie-– hope you scored a good gig up there.

-Neil Lieberman