Although this often considered the record that crossed B.B. King over into the pop market, Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955-1990 reveals that it actually marked the 19th B.B. entry on pop charts dating back [...]
Manish Boy' was one of a series of Chess singles that featured Muddy Waters convincingly touting his own virility ('spelled M-A-N, that represent man, no B-O-Y') ably (and verbally) assisted by an all-star crew with [...]
As a staff record producer -- back when the common industry term was 'A&R man' -- Ralph Bass was responsible for many important blues, jazz and R&B singles and albums during his storied career. Bass [...]
After Elvis Presley recorded three of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup's songs in the 1950s, Crudup became known as “The Father of Rock 'n' Roll.” Crudup was recorded for RCA Victor or its Bluebird subsidiary from [...]
New York: Abbeville Press, 1993. Nothing but the Blues is one of the most wide-ranging and comprehensive books on the blues, consisting of 11 chapters, each by a different writer recruited for the project by [...]
Slide guitar maestro Robert Nighthawk took his cues from an earlier slide wizard, Tampa Red, when he recorded the powerfully emotive 'Black Angel Blues' and its flip side, 'Annie Lee Blues,' for Aristocrat Records in [...]
New York: Dutton, 1989. Searching for Robert Johnson is, at 83 pages, the shortest piece of literature in the Blues Hall of Fame, but the intense public interest in Robert Johnson and the insightful work [...]
This excellent 1970 compilation was the first of Columbia's five double albums of Smith's incomparable work. Rather than issue her output chronologically, Columbia took the approach of putting Smith's 16 earliest issued sides from 1923 [...]
Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1966. Published in 1991 “with a new Afterword.” Urban Blues was an eye-opening, progressive look at the blues when it was first published in 1966, and though [...]
Bursting with energy from a strutting pulse, Hubert Sumlin's zinging guitar and Howlin' Wolf's lupine gnarl, 'Killing Floor' was one of Wolf's most recognizable songs. It has long been a staple among many blues bands [...]