VA - Blues For Rainy Days (2011)

This 14-track set of contemporary blues artists is themed around gray weather and rainy days, and while it isn't uplifting in the normal sense, a shared feeling of melancholy comes through, and in its own way, the fact that we all have rainy days -- both actually and emotionally -- and still manage to work ourselves through them makes this collection oddly uplifting after all. The blues is made for such days, actually. Among the highlights in this atmospheric set are Miller Anderson's "Fog on the Highway," Samantha Fish's version of "Louisiana Rain," and the Cadillac Blues Band's "Rainy Day." Into everyone's life, the rain must fall, or so they say. The same could be said for the blues.