New York: Harper & Row, 1986. While Peter Guralnick established his credentials with his early writings on blues and rock 'n' roll, Sweet Soul Music revealed him to be also be an astute observer and [...]
Matt "Guitar" Murphy only garnered widespread public attention through the 1980 Blues Brothers movie, in which he acted in a scene with Aretha Franklin and played with Jake and Elwood's band, but his laurels in [...]
Lazy Lester, the last surviving member of the colorfully nicknamed South Louisiana blues artists who created the "swamp blues" sound on Excello Records, joins his friend, the late Slim Harpo, in the Blues Hall of [...]
Fifty-two years after his death, Robert Johnson stunned the recording industry when this boxed set of his 1936-37 recordings sold over half a million copies, eventually surpassing a million worldwide. Since Columbia's initial reissues of [...]
Howlin' Wolf's 1960 single 'Spoonful' for Chess Records has become one of the standards of Chicago blues but like many other such songs that are familiar to nearly every blues fan today, it never even [...]
The second landmark live album recorded by B.B. King in Chicago, six years after 'Live at the Regal,' 'Live in Cook County Jail' generated spectacular sales and publicity. It is still the only B.B. King [...]
West Side Soul ranks among many blues aficionados as one of Delmark Records' two 'desert island discs' from the 1960s along with Junior Wells' Hoodoo Man Blues. Both were fresh, spirited distillations of the blues [...]
Boss Blues Harmonica, released by the GRT Corporation in 1972, was at the time the most comprehensive collection of Little Walter's quintessential blues harmonica recordings ever compiled. It was, literally, the best of Little Walter [...]
Blues Who's Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers, by Sheldon Harris. New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1979. 1981-1992 editions published by Da Capo Press, New York. Blues Who's Who, a monumental compilation of blues data [...]
Few figures in blues history have been as important as Tampa Red, 'The Guitar Wizard.' From his recording debut in 1928 until his retirement in the 1950s, record companies released more 78rpm records by Tampa [...]