Vee-Jay Records of Chicago came up with an unlikely formula to put John Lee Hooker on both the rhythm & blues and pop music charts with the catchy original version of his bad-man theme, 'Boom [...]

Rocket '88'' is one of many blues and R&B singles cited in retrospect as 'the first rock 'n' roll record.' Producer Sam Phillips recorded it at his Memphis Recording Service, where Elvis Presley would launch [...]

Elmore (Elmo) James ushered in a new era of electric slide guitar with his historic recording of 'Dust My Broom' for Trumpet Records of Jackson, Mississippi, in 1951. It was the only release on the [...]

Texas Flood was the 1958 classic covered for a far wider audience by Stevie Ray Vaughan 25 years later. Larry Davis was already a soulful vocalist in 1958, and would become a powerful guitarist, but [...]

Come On In My Kitchen' was one of several songs from Robert Johnson's first session in 1936 that have come to be regarded as classics, although like most of his other records, it was not [...]

Big Road Blues was one of the most influential recordings of early Mississippi blues, a song many bluesmen learned either from the record or from seeing Crystal Springs blues legend Tommy Johnson in person. 'I [...]

Robert Johnson's 1936 recording of 'Cross Road Blues' has become a central element in the story--real, imagined, or fabricated--of Johnson selling his soul to devil at the crossroads, as depicted on the big screen in [...]

How Long, How Long Blues' was a massive hit in the prewar blues era, a song that every blues singer and piano player had to know, and one that has continued to inspire dozens of [...]

Terraplane Blues' isn't the best known of Robert Johnson's works today, but it was the song most often recalled as a Johnson hit by bluesmen of the 1930s. In the grand blues tradition of automotive [...]

Got My Mojo Working,' Muddy Waters' rousing signature tune and set-closer for years, and a standard in countless blues band repertoires, surprisingly enough was never a hit single for Muddy. He first recorded it in [...]