The Blues Project and Robbie Basho played the Matrix again on Tuesday, September 6, 1966 — the last night the listings give them together before the Blues Project finished the week alone.

Basho is the reason to slow down here, because he is the least famous name on any bill in this chronicle and among the more remarkable. Born Daniel Robinson Jr., he took the name Robbie Basho from the seventeenth-century Japanese poet, played solo steel-string guitar, and recorded for John Fahey's Takoma label — the small imprint that effectively created the idea of the American Primitive guitar, a solo instrumental tradition drawing on Delta blues, Indian raga and Appalachian modal playing all at once. Basho pushed further into Indian and Persian forms than Fahey did and sang in a keening, untrained voice that most listeners either loved or could not tolerate.

Booking him alongside a New York electric blues band, in a hundred-capacity room, six nights running, is exactly the sort of programming the Matrix could do and the ballrooms could not. A thousand-capacity hall needs a draw. A pizza shop with a stage can put a solo raga guitarist in front of forty people on a Tuesday.