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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Born Under a Bad Sign' was one of the signature hits of Albert King that started to win the left-handed string-bender a crossover following in 1967, as he began to break out of the chittlin [...]

'Wang Dang Doodle' was the last Willie Dixon-produced Chicago blues single to make the Billboard charts, achieiving the No. 4 R&B and No. 58 Hot 100 positions in the spring of 1966. It became Koko [...]

Amos Blackmore had barely shaken the dust of his native Memphis' streets from his pants cuffs when he began to make a name for himself in Chicago Blues. Soon after the pugnacious 12-year-old moved north [...]

One of a number of cautionary warnings recorded by the suspicious and distrustful Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), “Don’t Start Me Talkin’” was his biggest hit on the Billboard R&B charts. Sonny Boy had been [...]