The cover photograph by David Gahr is as intimate and sensual as a French Impressionist painting, capturing the mood of the New Orleans blues period of Champion Jack Dupree. The album is cast as "a song saga--in a setting of boogie woogie from slow blues to surging stomps" and unified thematically: "The theme is woman. Or women. Bad women and good women. Hard times, hooch, hot hands and hot music. Slow songs and sad lines" (liner notes).