Bukka White's 1940 session for producer Lester Melrose in Chicago is regarded as one of the pinnacles of blues recording history. The 12 tracks from that two-day session, along with two songs from a 1937 [...]
Albert King, often billed as “King of the Blues Guitar,” was arguably at one time the world's most widely imitated blues guitarist, although his self-taught left-handed method of playing with his axe turned upside down [...]
As a portrait of the down-and-out, street-level life of a junkie in 1958, Blues From the Gutter must have had quite an appeal to the album-buying public of the beat poets' era. Dupree's moods actually [...]
No writer has done more to chronicle the vibrant sounds of New Orleans rhythm & blues than Jeff Hannusch, a transplanted Canadian who made the Crescent City his home. In his first book, I Hear [...]
Denise LaSalle has reigned as the Queen of the Blues on the Southern soul circuit for years, famed for her many self-penned hits as well as her bold and bawdy stage act. LaSalle, born Ora [...]
Big Maybelle, one of the most powerful and expressive blues vocalists of the 1950s, led a life that was, as a sticker on one of her albums advertised, “One part triumph, two parts tragedy.” In [...]
Bill “Hoss” Allen, Gene “Daddy” Nobles, and “John R.” (John Richbourg), the late-night announcing crew of WLAC radio in Nashville, were inducted together into the Hall of Fame in 1994 for their groundbreaking work in [...]
Big Joe Turner, the quintessential shouter of the blues, crossed many boundaries with his spirited, free-swinging vocal excursions. He was a king of the jump blues genre, a boogie woogie belter, progenitor of rhythm & [...]
One of the few blues queens of the prewar vaudeville era to enjoy a new round of celebrity in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, Sippie Wallace began her recording career in 1923. Billed as the [...]
Dinah Washington enjoyed great renown in her later years for her ballad singing and jazz stylings, as well as for her catchy pop/R&B duets with Brook Benton, but in her day she was hailed as [...]