On the CD label of Feelin’ Good, Jesse Mae Hemphill is flanked by a fife and drum duo; and though there’s no drum band to be found on the disc, the picture is a fitting tribute to the rich and complicated musical roots this consummate Mississippi blues woman can claim.

Hemphill was born near Como, Mississippi, in northern Panola county. Her grandfather, Sid Hemphill, was a blind fiddler who led string bands. Her great grandfather, Dock Hemphill, was a Choctaw Indian who also played the fiddle. In fact, most of the Hemphill family studied some sort of instrument, and by time she was eight years old, Jesse Mae was playing the guitar and, soon after, the drums. As she sings on “My Daddy’s Blues”: “Well my daddy was a musician/And my granddaddy too/Well my mother, she was a musician too/You know, I was born to be a musician too.”

Gathered from recordings made in 1984 and 1988, Feelin’ Good offers glimpses of Delta juke joints, country picnics and family frolics. Most of all, though, Hemphill’s hypnotic, rough-hewn guitar, complex rhythms, and somber, often keening vocals open a door into the soul of a woman who is expressing her deepest sorrows and desires. Her songs are largely original, bolstered by primitive riffs and traditional motifs. On “Go Back To Your Used To Be”, she sings about a bad man, reeling off a litany of the top-shelf booze (Crown Royal, Johnny Walker Red) he’s been drinking while he mistreats her. “Tell Me You Love Me” celebrates a good man: “Feel it in my heart/We will never part,” she shouts. “Shake It Baby” is a boogie-down number (“Come on in, drink some gin/Ain’t no sin/Drink some wine, blow your mind”) that immediately conjures the dancing din of a Delta juke. “Shame On You” (originally a 45 single) may be the disc’s most distinctive cut, with its high, haunting guitar and circling tambourine — which Hemphill is famous for pounding with her foot.

Those who have recently discovered R.L. Burnside’s brand of modern primitivism will find something very similar on Feelin’ Good. And along with raucous intensity, Hemphill offers up a more subtle, feminine side of what Son House called that “low-down shaking, empty chill.”