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 [...]
Bob Koester founded America's oldest continuously operated independent record label, Delmark Records, in St. Louis in 1953. Koester's vaunted status in the blues and jazz world came not only from the many historic albums he [...]
Eighteen-year-old Little Willie John (1937-1968) didn't want to record 'Fever' when the song was presented to him in 1956, according to King Records producer Henry Glover, but Glover persisted and John's career got its biggest [...]
Sam Cooke may be best remembered for his Top 40 hits and pioneering soul sounds, not to mention his gospel gems with the Soul Stirrers, but he had a profound gift for singing the blues, [...]
False Accusations was the first Robert Cray album ever to hit the “Billboard 200” charts - quite a feat for an independent label blues release, and noteworthy enough to secure a major label deal for [...]
Most of Chess Records' Real Folk Blues albums were compilations of singles recorded over a span of years (in Wolf's case, from 1956 to 1965). This album did not fit the usual definitions of “folk [...]
Eddie Boyd, a Chicago blues pianist, songwriter, and steel mill worker, came up with a true-to-life blues in 1952 that hit home with many a working man in “Five Long Years,” a No. 1 record [...]