“I Ain’t Superstitious,” an ominous Willie Dixon composition recorded by Howlin’ Wolf in 1961, is best known to rock audiences through the Jeff Beck Group’s 1968 cover version featuring Rod Stewart on vocals. On the [...]
“I’ll Play the Blues For You,” recorded by Albert King in Memphis for the Stax label in 1971, was written by Jerry Beach, a longtime fixture on the Shreveport, Louisiana, music scene who died in [...]
“Preachin’ the Blues,” a two-part single by Son House on the Paramount label from 1930, is a prime example not only of House’s intensity as a Delta blues singer and guitarist but also of his [...]
Elvin Bishop first came to prominence alongside fellow Blues Hall of Fame guitarist Michael Bloomfield as a member of the influential Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the 1960s and has since carved his own niche [...]
Eddy Clearwater earned a reputation early in his career as a colorful and versatile entertainer, one whose onstage flamboyance belied his soft-spoken nature. A Chuck Berry act was once his specialty, and he learned how [...]
Jimmy Johnson followed a circuitous route back to the blues he grew up within Mississippi to reemerge on the Chicago blues scene in the 1970s heralded as a fresh and exciting “new” voice in the [...]
The "Godfather of British Blues" and a longtime crusader for American blues originators, John Mayall joins many of his idols, as well as a famous former band member, with his induction into the Blues Hall [...]
The Memphis Jug Band was one of the most popular and prolific blues groups of the 1920s and '30s, employing jugs, harmonicas, kazoos, guitars, mandolins, fiddles, and other instruments to entertain a wide variety of [...]
Tommy Couch (born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on November 12, 1942) and Gerald "Wolf" Stephenson (born in Columbia, Mississippi, on August 24, 1943) built Malaco Records, the premier label for Southern soul, soul-blues and gospel music, [...]
Jeff Todd Titon's Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis ranks as one of the most important analytical studies of the blues, examining the music in an incisive and interconnected web of contexts, including [...]