Baby Please Don't Go' has been recorded in many variations under many titles, but most of them can be traced back to the 1935 version by Joe Williams' Washboard Blues Singers, or to Williams' remakes [...]
Boogie Chillen set the nation rocking and put John Lee Hooker's name on the map with his very first release in 1949. Although recorded up north in Detroit, it was a guitar boogie of the [...]
Juke' was the groundbreaking instrumental that established Little Walter Jacobs as a national recording star and brought unprecedented prominence to the harmonica as a prime instrument in the blues. Untold numbers of blues performers took [...]
Death Letter,' the mournful masterpiece from Delta Blues master Son House's landmark Columbia LP Father of the Folk Blues, represents blues at its deepest level. House's paean to a departed lover was recorded in Boston [...]
Probably the most-played set-closing instrumental in the repertoires of blues bands around the country for more than 50 years has been the Freddy King smash 'Hide Away,' a Top 10 R&B hit on the Federal [...]
Bill Doggett had his own big band in Philadelphia before joining Lucky Millinder in 1940. Doggett played and arranged for the Ink Spots, Illinois Jacquet, Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald before forming his own group [...]
This was the first song Skip James recorded in 1931 for Paramount Records, and also the first song he sang at his historic Newport Folk Festival performance in 1964. James had just been rediscovered in [...]
Nobody sang 'Hound Dog' better than Big Mama Thornton. The Pop world only knows that in 1956 Elvis Presley gyrated to it. But this Leiber-Stoller song achieved initial fame when Thornton recorded her seminal version [...]
Black Night, the mournful minor-key blues masterpiece of West Coast blues balladeer Charles Brown, stayed at No. 1 on the Billboard Rhythm & Blues charts for 14 weeks in 1951. No record since then has [...]
John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson’s first record, “Good Morning, School Girl” (with “Sugar Mama Blues” on the flip side) was also his best remembered and most influential release. Williamson brought the lowly harmonica (never previously [...]