Paste Magazine: The 10 Best Roots & Blues Albums of 2018

# 1 Charles Lloyd & the Marvels + Lucinda Williams:Vanished Gardens
Before he became a Fillmore-headlining jazz star in the ’60s, saxophonist Lloyd played in Howlin’ Wolf’s band. Before she became one of Dylan’s most obvious heirs in the ’80s, Williams got started by covering blues standards by Robert Johnson and Memphis Minnie. Those early apprenticeships enabled Lloyd and Williams to pull off the year’s most audacious album: a long overdue integration of Dylan’s innovations in the ’60s with John Coltrane’s innovations in the same decade. Williams’s moaning vocals lend language to the instrumentalists’ improvisations, and their musical inventions trace the implications of her literary forays. A landmark achievement. Read entire article online at Paste Magazine