Lester Melrose
Producer, talent scout and publisher, Lester Melrose had a hand in nearly all of the Blues that emerged from pre-World War II Chicago. He developed a signature sound, 'the Melrose sound' from the artists that [...]
Down Home Blues — Z.Z. Hill (Malaco album track, 1982)
With the George Jackson penned 'Down Home Blues,' Z.Z. Hill is credited with bringing the Blues back to the African American community. In 1982, the album Down Home inspired radio programmers across America to add [...]
Champion Jack Dupree
One of the blues world's most colorful characters, William Thomas' “Champion Jack' Dupree was both a first-rate entertainer and a top-quality artist, whether he took the role of merry mirthmaker, political commentator, or down-and-out denizen [...]
Sleepy John Estes
The songs of Sleepy John Estes constituted a poetic, personal and insightful body of work that both portrayed and transcended the everyday troubles, hardships, and meager pleasures of life in Brownsville, Tennessee. As Ray Harmon [...]
Lowell Fulson
One of the foremost figures in postwar blues over a period of several decades, Lowell Fulson possessed an impressive ability to adapt to or set his own trends in the blues. Born on a Choctaw [...]
Billie Holiday
Although Billie Holiday is most widely hailed for her revolutionary role in jazz history, she is also indelibly associated with the blues - not so much in the musical structure of her material as in [...]
Fred McDowell
McDowell, a seminal figure in Mississippi hill country blues, was one of the most vibrant performers of the 1960s blues revival. McDowell was a sharecropper and local entertainer in 1959 when he made his first [...]
Johnny Shines
Delta blues master Johnny Shines was known as 'Little Wolf' in his younger days when he modeled his music after that of Howlin' Wolf, but he came to be primarily associated with his legendary cohort [...]
Sunnyland Slim
Albert Luandrew, better known as Sunnyland Slim, became a legendary figure in Chicago blues history long before he died, and he lived to be inducted in to the Hall of Fame and garner a National [...]
I Can’t Quit You Baby — Otis Rush (Cobra 1956)
I Can't Quit You Baby' kicked off the recording career of Otis Rush, then in his early twenties, and launched a new Chicago label, Cobra, in grand fashion. Although both Rush and Cobra came up [...]