Big Joe Williams, whose 1935 classic Baby Please Don't Go is already in the Blues Hall of Fame in the singles category, had been recording singles, first on 78 rpm and then 45 rpm, for [...]

Bobby Bland's first LP with Malaco Records provided him with his biggest hit of recent decades, the title track Members Only, written by Larry Addison. Bland, a model for company loyalty in the record business, [...]

Etta James Rocks the House, recorded live at the New Era Club in Nashville on September 27 and 28, 1963, is only the fifth live album elected to the Blues Hall of Fame. It joins [...]

Jimmy Reed was already making history in 1958 when Vee-Jay Records of Chicago released his first album, I'm Jimmy Reed. Not only had Reed already had ten singles on the national rhythm & blues charts [...]

Producer and blues author Sam Charters headed the historic Vanguard Records project, Chicago/The Blues/Today!, which served to introduce the hardcore South and West side blues sounds to a new young audience in 1966. While Vanguard [...]

Chester Burnett A.K.A. Howlin' Wolf was one of the three double albums issued by Chess in 1972 (under the new ownership of G.R.T. in New York) that have been elected to the Blues Hall of [...]

This eponymously titled album is known to Howlin' Wolf aficionados as 'the rocking chair album', after the cover photo of an acoustic guitar resting against a rocking chair. But listeners expecting a comfy, quiet set [...]

Down and Out Blues was the first LP by Sonny Boy Williamson (No. 2). Chess Records subsidiary label, Checker, released this collection of 1955-58 singles in 1960. Harmonica maestro Williamson (Alex 'Rice' Miller, 1912-1965) recorded [...]

Folklorist Dr. Harry Oster used the tool room of the Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola to record Angola Prisoners' Blues in 1959. Of the three guitar-playing convicts featured on this LP -- Robert "Guitar" Welch, [...]

Texas-born Freddy (or Freddie) King came up on Chicago's West Side blues scene alongside Otis Rush, Magic Sam and Buddy Guy and burst on the national R&B scene with a string of hit singles in [...]