harles Caldwell embodied the blues. As hackneyed as that sentence may sound, there is no description of Caldwell more apt. Need proof? Try the irony of this guy’s life story: Born dirt poor in rural Mississippi, Caldwell perfected his craft in obscurity, bartering his undeniable talent for nothing more than a night’s worth of juke-joint liquor. By the time Fat Possum founder Matthew Johnson found him, Caldwell was sixty and dying of cancer. But not even Chemo could stop this soulful, stubborn bluesman from cutting a remarkably polished studio album. That album, Remember Me, has the dubious distinction of being, simultaneously, Caldwell’s debut and his swan song. He died months after its completion. Oh, and lest we neglect to mention it—in the midst of Caldwell’s declining health, his woman went and left him.

Had enough? If Caldwell were here, it’s doubtful he would have indulged in a moment’s pity (word has it he worked the farm as hard as ever during his illness), so we won’t dwell on his poignant bio any longer. Caldwell wants us to remember not the tragic figure of an incurable patient, but rather the wary, caring, earnest, jilted yet stoic man that inhabits his music.

That music—clean, sparse electric blues guitar and a worn, soulful voice—is as evocative in style as it is in substance. Though Caldwell’s playing sounds easy and straightforward, it is in fact deceptively complex. Rhythms are established quickly and immediately bent, disguised, recast and finally revisited. On songs like “Same Man”, Caldwell’s guitar occasionally recedes behind the backbeat, tentatively poking its head out like a paranoid escapee flashing his prison garb. When it goes back into hiding we hear Caldwell’s impossibly earthy voice sing “Why you wait / ’till I get old / ’fore you decide / To put me down?”

Caldwell’s songwriting is as simple as it gets. He takes a line like “Can you remember me?” and repeats it again and again, stressing the words in a new way each time. It’s akin to fishing by casting the line from as many angles as possible, figuring that eventually, you’ll catch your dinner. And Caldwell succeeds in hooking us, evoking emotion without ever pandering for pity.

Neither are his songs spiteful. Caldwell manages to sing about loss, old age, and loneliness without ever sounding anything but resigned. Even as Caldwell is asking us to remember him, we see that he’s close enough to the end to remember him, too. What’s striking is that he can do so with such dispassion, as though from beyond the grave.

It’s absurd to search for singles on an album like this, but if you’re looking for a catchy standout, “Hadn’t I Been Good to You” is your song. On this track Caldwell laments a futile relationship, saying of the woman that left him, “All I ever got from you / Was ‘give me, loan me, let me live’”. Caldwell refuses to be the victim, but he refuses, just as resolutely, to pull a punch. And who can blame him? The man hadn’t the time to spare.