Now, what with this bein’ a free will world ’n’ all, you’ve got a choice: you can either be a right chump who saves up his hard-earned shekels all year long, only to blow them by buying something feeble like a transitory twelve month memorial to your favorite trendy television show—or you can choose wisely instead and spruce up your humble log cabin with the latest educational calendar and accompanying blues album, both of which have been expertly complied with an unreasonable attention to detail by blues historian and collector John Tefteller.

Tefteller, who specializes in snaring the hot 78 rpm sides that Paramount pressed in the late ’20s and early ’30s, has been putting his archive to good use since 2004 by remastering a heapin’ helpin’ of the thousands of rare tracks he’s acquired over the years—some of which are the only copies extant—and then reissuing the highlights every year on a bonus eighteen track long player that provides the perfect aural accompaniment to each and every month’s graphic on his annual Blues Images calendar.

And what images! Holy Bible illustrator R. Crumb ain’t whistling in Dixie when he’s quoted on the 2011 calendar’s cover about the superb source material from which the visuals are derived: namely, Paramount’s exhaustive rack jobber Race record catalogues.

Even better, each and every calendar page depicting sob songs of wanton wimmens ’n’ griftin’ gents abounds with lyrics and an insightful explanatory section that puts both the artist and the song into historical context—not to mention the day by day notations which mark the secular arrivals and spiritual departures of all the blues greats.

You better listen to me ’cause I’m tellin’ you what’s being put down so you better pick up on it. At a mere twenty bucks a pop for both the twelve month calendar and the eighteen track record, you can’t afford not to ring in 2011 with the likes of such deified Delta denizens as Ma Rainey, Kokomo Arnold, Furry Lewis, Charley Patton, Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a dozen more.

And if you can’t afford it, go here and buy it anyway—that way you’ll have something suitable to spin at your next rent party!