Lightnin’ Hopkins was recording at a furious pace for various companies in the early 1960s, utilizing his uncanny ability to improvise new songs and adapt old ones on the spot. He had no bigger fan [...]
Here’s the Man!!!, Bobby Bland’s second full LP on the Houston-based Duke label, was loaded with the kind of first-rate blues and R&B that made Bland such an idol in his time. In common with [...]
Little Walter: The Complete Chess Masters (1950-1967) (Hip-O Select, 2009) Little Walter Jacobs was the best blues harmonica player ever, in the opinion of many fans and musicians, and certainly the most influential, so Hip-O’s [...]
Bo Diddley was the stage name of Ellas McDaniel and the title of both his debut single and this, his first LP, which compiled 12 sides from the groundbreaking singles on Chess Records’ Checker subsidiary [...]
MCA released several outstanding compilations of classic blues and R&B sides from the Chess Records catalog in The Chess Box series. The Howlin’ Wolf box (Chess CH5-9332) is the second in the series to win Blues Hall of [...]
Elmore James' The Sky Is Crying is the other James recording being honored with a Blues Hall of Fame induction this year. James, who died in 1963, did not live to see the release of [...]
Blues Is King is the third B.B. King album selected for the Blues Hall of Fame, following Live at the Regal and Live in Cook County Jail. All three were recorded live in Chicago for the ABC label group. [...]
The 1966 John Lee Hooker album Real Folk Blues is the latest of several Chess Records’ Real Folk Blues albums to be elected to the Blues Hall of Fame. Whereas the rest of the LPs [...]
When folklorist Alan Lomax recorded Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim, and John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson in 1947 in New York City, the results were so controversial that he waited a decade to release the [...]
Capitol Records made a brief attempt to mine the late 1960s/early '70s blues revival market, releasing albums by James Cotton, Fred McDowell, Guitar Jr. (Lonnie Brooks) and Stu Ramsay & Chicago Slim, none of which [...]