The larger-than-life legend of Chester Arthur Burnett, better known as Howlin' Wolf, is chronicled with care and respect by co-authors James Segrest and Mark Hoffman in their detailed biography Moanin' at Midnight: The Life and [...]
Producer and blues author Sam Charters headed the historic Vanguard Records project, Chicago/The Blues/Today!, which served to introduce the hardcore South and West side blues sounds to a new young audience in 1966. While Vanguard [...]
Rocket '88'' is one of many blues and R&B singles cited in retrospect as 'the first rock 'n' roll record.' Producer Sam Phillips recorded it at his Memphis Recording Service, where Elvis Presley would launch [...]
Chester Burnett A.K.A. Howlin' Wolf was one of the three double albums issued by Chess in 1972 (under the new ownership of G.R.T. in New York) that have been elected to the Blues Hall of [...]
This eponymously titled album is known to Howlin' Wolf aficionados as 'the rocking chair album', after the cover photo of an acoustic guitar resting against a rocking chair. But listeners expecting a comfy, quiet set [...]
One of the pioneers of West Coast blues, singer, pianist and songwriter Jimmy McCracklin enjoyed one of the longest recording careers in the blues, lasting from 1945 until 2010. Born James Walker on Aug. 13, [...]
Elmore (Elmo) James ushered in a new era of electric slide guitar with his historic recording of 'Dust My Broom' for Trumpet Records of Jackson, Mississippi, in 1951. It was the only release on the [...]
The colorful persona of Peetie Wheatstraw The Devil's Son-in-Law (The High Sheriff From Hell) belonged to William Bunch, a singer, pianist and guitarist from Ripley, Tennessee. Born on December 21, 1902, Bunch was using the [...]
Texas Flood was the 1958 classic covered for a far wider audience by Stevie Ray Vaughan 25 years later. Larry Davis was already a soulful vocalist in 1958, and would become a powerful guitarist, but [...]
Come On In My Kitchen' was one of several songs from Robert Johnson's first session in 1936 that have come to be regarded as classics, although like most of his other records, it was not [...]