Down Beat Blues albums of the year.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Jerron Paxton would sit with an ear by the radio, eagerly absorbing the nuances and history of Black American traditional music that connect him to his ancestral roots in the South. A songwriter, inheritor of tradition, and a walking, talking jukebox, Paxton approaches his craft with equal part wit and reverence, with a knack for leg-pulling and cracking wise. Things Done Changed is an album of original songs that sound beamed in from nearly a century ago, when jazz and blues were performed as a means of both personal and cultural survival. Lick by lick, Paxton builds a bridge between generations gone and generations to come, singing the heartaches and joys of the past and present.