Bonnie Raitt
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
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
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 [...]
Gus Cannon and Cannon’s Jug Stompers
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 [...]
Amos Milburn
Amos Milburn was one of the most popular young blues artists of the late 1940s and early '50s, famed for his rollicking piano boogies, smooth blues and ballads, and a slew of drinking songs that [...]
Son Seals
Son Seals' fiery, hard-driven electric blues renewed the gritty Southern roots of Chicago blues during the 1970s and 80s, an era during which many of his contemporaries were molding their blues around the rhythms of [...]
Clifford Antone
Clifford Antone transformed Austin, Texas, into a major blues center in the 1970s and '80s after he founded a nightclub called Antone's to book the legendary bluesmen he loved. Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Albert King, [...]
Mike Leadbitter
Mike Leadbitter was hailed as the world's foremost authority on postwar blues during his years as editor of the pioneering magazine Blues Unlimited in England. Leadbitter, was born in India on March 12, 1942, but [...]
Bob Porter
The authoritative voice of Bob Porter is familiar to radio listeners across the country from his syndicated broadcasts of Portraits in Blue, the in-depth series he launched at WBGO in Newark, New Jersey, in 1981. [...]
Ain’t Nobody’s Business — Jimmy Witherspoon (Supreme, 1947)
Jimmy Witherspoon applied his ample pipes to revivals of several blues standards from the 1920s and '30s during his November 1947 sessions for Supreme Records in Los Angeles. “Ain't Nobody's Business” was first recorded in [...]