The first time I ever heard Keith Brown play the blues was in a little bistro on the Left Bank. It was a damp night, and the streetlights were glowing along the Quai d'Orsay as I made my way toward a now long-forgotten rendezvous. As I passed the doorway of a dive known as Jean-Luc's, I could've sworn I heard Mississippi Fred McDowell working a little bit of "61Highway." Could it be?

Well, no, it couldn't be. McDowell passed away 29 years ago. Keith Brown, however, is a musician who plays very much in the manner of blues legends such as McDowell and Son House, and I wish I really had encountered Brown playing in a quaint French bistro. It could've happened, for he spends a good deal of time performing in Europe.

Brown's recent self-released album, Got to Keep Movin', is a fine country blues CD that's easily a qualitative match for any acoustic blues album released in 2001.

Brown was born and raised in Memphis. He spent three years at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, but returned to his hometown to finish college. "I went to school at night while working days at the University of Memphis in administration," Brown explained. "I finished my degree in history in 1996. I took up guitar as a teenager and began taking classical guitar lessons at the University of Memphis. I did two semesters of that and then began teaching myself to play a variety of music, all rooted in the blues. From there I made the trip backward, being a history person, and naturally sought out the history of American popular music. That's how I came across acoustic blues. It was natural for me to embrace this music, since I was an acoustic player anyway.

"I also discovered that my direct ancestors had played this music," he added. "My family was from Greenwood, Mississippi. They moved to Memphis in the 1940s. So this music was also something personal for me, and I'm enormously proud of the contribution country blues players have made to American music."

Though Brown can certainly play electric guitar, he's chosen to stick with his acoustic sound, and he continues to work primarily as a solo artist. "I've always preferred the acoustic guitar," he said, "because it's a more personal and intimate instrument than the electric guitar. It's convenient for expression at any time in almost any place. All you need is the guitar — no plugs, amplifiers, etc. It's also ideal for singing and writing songs."