“Everyday I Have the Blues” is one of the most ubiquitous of all blues songs, a required number in the repertoires of the countless bar and lounge bands of many genres. Its late entry into [...]

“I Got a Woman” by Ray Charles perfectly illustrates the way Charles transformed the sacred into the secular. He heard the Southern Tones’ gospel tune “It Must Be Jesus” (a 1954 Duke Records release) on [...]

“Rollin’ Stone” by Muddy Waters stands as a landmark recording for several reasons. Cut in February of 1950, it was the first blues record that Chess ever issued (and the second overall, following a Gene [...]

“Shake Your Moneymaker,” recorded in New Orleans in 1961, marked an exuberant, uptempo departure from slide guitar master Elmore James’ deep blues recordings. First issued as a 45 on Bobby Robinson’s Fire label, the single [...]

“The St. Louis Blues” is one of the most recorded songs of all time, in any genre. Few versions of the W.C. Handy tune, however, can compare with Bessie Smith’s. Part of the magic of [...]

“Cross Cut Saw,” one of Albert King’s early chart hits, was a song with a complicated evolution. Originally a downhome Delta blues recorded in 1941 by Tony Hollins and Tommy McClennan, it was later recorded [...]

A No. 1 R&B hit which also reached No. 3 on the pop charts in an era of hit instrumentals, “Green Onions” embodied a simple but memorable 12-bar blues groove laid down by session musicians [...]

“I’m a Man,” the first song recorded by Bo Diddley in 1955, became the flip side of his debut single, the eponymous “Bo Diddley,” which was selected as a Blues Hall of Fame classic in [...]

The exuberant “Roll ’Em Pete” was the first studio recording of Big Joe Turner’s powerful pipes and Pete Johnson’s rollicking boogie-woogie piano. Recorded in New York City on December 30, 1938, a week after the [...]

The original rendition of “See See Rider,” which became a standard recorded by countless artists in many genres, was a low-moaning version by the “Mother of the Blues,” Ma Rainey, in October 1924 in New [...]