The very first cut of Violin, Sing the Blues for Me featuring Lonnie Johnson—not on guitar but on fiddle—reopens a forgotten world of fiddle-driven blues. The fiddle’s ability to closely mimic the human voice and its long history in African American hands made it a logical choice for an emerging blues repertoire in the early twentieth century. Yet for a number of reasons outlined in the superb liner notes, the guitar squeezed the fiddle out and left it to languish.