Sweet Home Chicago' has become an all too familiar bar band anthem over the past few decades, but even in Robert Johnson's time the theme was circulating from one artist to another. Johnson may have [...]
T-Bone Walker's 1947 recording of 'Call It Stormy Monday' was one of the most influential records not only in blues history, but in guitar history. As if the classic lyrics sung so smoothly by Walker [...]
I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man' was the first of numerous Willie Dixon songs to be recorded by Muddy Waters, one of a series that built on Muddy's already-established charisma to build him an even more [...]
The Things That I Used to Do was one of the biggest blues hits of the 1950s, a song that entered the repertoires of hundreds of blues singers. A poignant, remorseful piece, it provided the [...]
The Wolf's quintessential howling cry rode a hypnotic pounding beat all the way the Top Ten of Billboard's rhythm & blues charts on the 1956 single 'Smoke Stack Lightning,' often spelled 'Smokestack Lightnin'' on subsequent [...]
Booker T. Washington White was one of the most powerful, imaginative and original country blues artists both in the pre-World War II era and during the folk blues revival of the 1960s. In between, he [...]
Even in a blues world populated by colorful and idiosyncratic characters, Big Joe Williams loomed as one of the most inimitable - and irascible. Born to ramble, he left his Crawford, Mississippi, home at age [...]
In Pre-World War II Blues, Rosevelt Sykes was a prolific figure, waving his Urban Blues sensibilities with intricate chord patterns and bass figures. Born in Arkansas, Sykes moved to St. Louis with his family in [...]
A true musician's musician, Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown has mastered the guitar, fiddle, drums, viola, harmonica, piano, mandolin and bass. Gatemouth's smooth blend of Texas style with Jazz, Country and Cajun music has altered the definition [...]
Born in lower Silesia, Germany, Chris Strachwitz came to the United States to attend the University of California at Berkeley. In the summer of 1959 he met Lightning Hopkins in Houston, Texas, where the Texas [...]