Bobby Robinson is a prominent African-American independent record producer in New York, most active from the 1950s through the mid-1980s. He established several highly successful record labels and produced records that sold in the millions. [...]
Jerry Wexler has been dubbed the Godfather of Soul Music in America. As a music reporter in the late 1940s, he coined the term 'Rhythm and Blues' to define a new style of music. As [...]
Blues People: Negro Music in White America by LeRoi Jones, first published in 1963 by William Morrow, was the first book on blues written by an African-American critic. Jones, who later changed his name to [...]
Black Night, the mournful minor-key blues masterpiece of West Coast blues balladeer Charles Brown, stayed at No. 1 on the Billboard Rhythm & Blues charts for 14 weeks in 1951. No record since then has [...]
Down Home was a historic breakthrough album for Z.Z. Hill, Malaco Records, and the whole blues genre, setting a record by staying on the Billboard charts for almost two years after its release in 1982. [...]
Jim O’Neal, a cofounder of Living Blues magazine and Rooster Blues Records, worked on the committees that launched the Chicago Blues Festival, the King Biscuit Blues Festival, the Sunflower River Blues Festival, the W.C. Handy [...]
One of the most popular and prolific blues recording artists of the 1930s, Walter Davis was born in Grenada, Mississippi, on March 1, 1911. He became a leading figure on the St. Louis blues scene, [...]
Johnny 'Guitar' Watson reinvented himself as a flamboyant funkster and ultra-hip player extraordinaire in the 1970s, when his career reached new heights with hits such as A Real Mother For Ya, Superman Lover, and Lover [...]
Bobby Rush began his career in music over 55 years ago. Schooled in the music of Chicago in the 1950s, Rush has taken his brand of Soul Blues from the Chitlin' Circuit to stages around [...]
John Hammond, one of the most noted performers to emerge from the folk-blues revival of the 1960s, has sustained a consistent career and maintained a loyal following by remaining true to his sources as he [...]