CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS FROM THE SHOW HERE.

The warm evening air slowly turned to hazy humidity in the crowded room. Ladies idly fanned themselves as the band played a woozy calypso number. A white-clad gentleman, hair oiled and combed, sang of a Trinidadian hoodoo potion in a voice somewhere between Louis Armstrong and Blind Willie Johnson.

In spite of the pre-war feel to the night, this isn’t some forgotten night in a steamy Mississippi speakeasy. The material on display comes not from some dusty old record with a fading label, but from an album less than six months old. This is C.W. Stoneking, a musician whose wilful anachronism has garnered a mighty cross-generational following.

The entire evening had the curious feel of a show that should be watched decades later, on stuttering black and white film fed through an ancient projector. The night’s opening act, the delightful Mamie Minch, certainly fit this sensibility. Wearing a blue polka-dot dress, Miss Mamie (as her merchandise refers to her) might have stepped out of a time when her guitar (a gorgeous 73-year-old resonator) was factory-fresh, if not for the tattoo peeking out from beneath the hem of her dress.

Singing with a rich, deep voice, Miss Mamie blended vintage blues and country music; part Carter Family and part Odetta. With some nimble guitar work and a witty turn of phrase, she was lovingly received by the audience. The highlight came in her one-song encore, with Kentucky Mermaid, a story of a captured mermaid that flitted easily between hilarious wordplay and pathos, and earned her a rapturous response.

The man of the evening, Mr C.W. Stoneking, has always cut a curious figure. Having worn a uniform of unrelieved black during the touring for King Hokum, his Jungle Blues outfit is – as rendered on the album’s cover – an all-white linen affair. Worn with a bowtie and a hairstyle straight out of the roaring – œ20s, Stoneking is a unique performer. His man-out-of-time image reflects his ease with styles of bygone eras such as blues, jazz and calypso.

Amidst the elegantly aged décor of the Enmore Theatre, complete with potted ferns, Stoneking and his Primitive Horn Orchestra spin an atmosphere akin to that of a smoky jazz lounge. From the brash brass of Brave Son of America to the swooning Jungle Lullaby, Stoneking and his orchestra are hypnotic, offering the closest glimpse of time-travel that we might ever see. The subtle variations shift the atmosphere, from Cab Calloway-flavoured storytelling on the song Dodo Blues to a riverboat travelling through Africa’s dark heart in the early 20th century on Talkin’ Lion Blues.

Even when he stands alone on stage, Stoneking is a riveting performer. His Jailhouse Blues evokes the loneliness and desperation of a prison where the paint is peeling from the bars, a sense crystalline in its clarity even to the most law-abiding listener.

Don’t Go Dancin’ Down the Dark Town Strutter’s Ball was introduced by a lengthy story, highlighting Stoneking’s sly wit and further adding to the vintage atmosphere in the room as he spoke of fortune tellers, a nervous bridegroom and a seedy club that kidnaps the unwary. The set’s finale, the love potion-inspired murder ballad The Love Me or Die, swung with all the calypso-jazz energy of the record, but was marred by a stage-invader, whose goon-ish antics and complete lack of rhythm interrupted the song’s vibrant energy.

Thankfully, a brief interlude was all it took to recover. The encore featured the second appearance of Stoneking’s wife Kirsty Fraser to duet on On a Christmas Day, a salacious song of coy double-entendres that perfectly fit Fraser’s coquettish style. The emphatic closer, a Washboard Sam cover, featured a call-and-response chorus that had the audience swaying and hollering along like a bluesy music-hall number.

At the evening’s end, as Stoneking walked off to joyful applause, many audience members seemed shaken as they looked around – surprised perhaps to see Pixies t-shirts and men with facial piercings where they expected to see the flapper girls and gentlemen in neat suits that Stoneking had so convincingly evoked.