Founder of the Delta Blues -- Charley Patton (Yazoo, 1970) 'Charlie [sic] Patton was the most powerful blues recording of artist of all time, as well as the most subtle,' wrote Stephen Calt in the [...]

Few bodies of blues recordings have been as influential as Albert King's 1966-67 output at Stax Records, on singles and on the Born Under a Bad sign album. The LP collected songs from his first [...]

Elmore James' incomparable blues recordings continue to be endlessly recycled, and any number of his albums on a myriad of labels could be considered of Blues Hall of Fame quality. But the British compilation The [...]

Columbia's first King of the Delta Blues Singers compilation was a vehicle for the discovery of Robert Johnson by a new audience in 1961. By the time the second volume was released in 1970, Johnson [...]

Columbia's 1961 compilation of Robert Johnson's 1936-37 recordings was not a best seller, unlike the boxed set that created a frenzy nearly 30 years later, but it was arguably the single most important blues reissue [...]

While many of the great blues recordings have been commercial hits, there are others that sank almost without a trace. Skip James' Paramount singles, for instance -- nine of them, all recorded in 1931, after [...]

Cut from the same cloth as Wells' classic Hoodoo Man Blues LP from the same period, It's My Life, Baby! captured the Junior Wells-Buddy Guy team in great form, both in the studio and live [...]

This boxed set bears Willie Dixon’s name and photo on the front, but it is actually a collection of performances by 13 different Chess/Checker artists recorded between 1951 and 1969. The unifying theme is that [...]

Father of the Folk Blues, one of the key albums of the folk-blues revival, helped introduced the deepest of the Delta blues singers to a new generation of listeners in the 1960s. House had just [...]

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band was formed by Paul Butterfield. He brought in keyboardist Mark Naftalin and guitarist Elvin Bishop, both of whom he met as students at the University of Chicago. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield, [...]