A 1970 entry in the Chess Vintage Series, Hung Dead Head contains some of Blues Hall of Famer Lowell Fulson's finest work, most notably the standard 'Reconsider Baby' from a 1954 Dallas session. The other [...]
Fenton Robinson (1935-1997) was heralded as one of the most progressive guitarists in Chicago as well as one of the true intellectuals on the scene--a Tolstoy and Kafka reader also known as 'The Mellow Blues [...]
New York: Rinehart and Co., Inc., 1959. Reprinted with new introduction by the author: New York: Da Capo Press, 1975. The publication of The Country Blues by Sam Charters in 1959 was a major landmark [...]
The Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, played a crucial role in introducing the music of Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, Robert Pete Williams, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt, and [...]
Robert Palmer's extensive knowledge of music, ranging from blues and jazz to rock and folk to various genres of world music and the interconnectedness of all those idioms, made him a respected critic at Rolling [...]
One of the premier shouters of the jump blues era, Brown has been called 'the first singer of soul' (in John Broven's Walking to New Orleans), 'one of the great blues lyricists of all time' [...]
While most of Bonnie Raitt's songs may fall outside the realm of blues, there is no doubting her commitment to and love for the music and the blues musicians themselves. Heavily influenced by, and sometimes [...]
W.C. Handy was already being hailed as 'The Father of the Blues' when the blues recording industry was still in its infancy. Handy's compositions and adaptations of blues he had heard in his travels began [...]
Peter Guralnick, one of the premier writers on American roots music, is the author of three books already inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame as Classics of Blues Literature: Feel Like Going Home, Searching [...]
Jug band pioneer Gus Cannon, a seminal figure in Memphis blues, was born in Red Banks, Mississippi, in either 1883, 1884, or 1885, according to various sources. Cannon's primary instrument was the banjo, and he [...]