Vivian Carter and Jimmy Bracken were the “Vee” and “Jay” in Vee-Jay Records, at one time the largest black-owned record company in the world. Vee-Jay is renowned for its catalog of blues classics by Jimmy [...]

John W. Work, III, was a noted African American educator, composer, choral director, scholar, and folklorist whose 39-year career at Fisk University in Nashville (1927-1966) was filled with accolades. Work held degrees from Fisk, Columbia [...]

Samuel Charters piloted much of the 1960s blues revival in America, navigating a story line of the blues for a fascinated new audience through his extensive writings and record productions. Charters, born in Pittsburgh on [...]

Bruce Bromberg has been one of the premier producers of blues and roots music of the past 40 years, known especially for his work with Robert Cray. Although he was born in the blues capital [...]

Bill “Hoss” Allen, Gene “Daddy” Nobles, and “John R.” (John Richbourg), the late-night announcing crew of WLAC radio in Nashville, were inducted together into the Hall of Fame in 1994 for their groundbreaking work in [...]

Pete Welding, one of America's foremost blues authorities, made major contributions to the documentation of the blues both as a writer and as a record producer. Little of his work as a critic, annotator and [...]

John William 'Sonny' Payne was the genial host of the legendary King Biscuit Time program on KFFA radio in Helena, Arkansas, for more decades than most of his listeners have even been alive. Payne, a [...]

Robert Palmer's extensive knowledge of music, ranging from blues and jazz to rock and folk to various genres of world music and the interconnectedness of all those idioms, made him a respected critic at Rolling [...]

Peter Guralnick, one of the premier writers on American roots music, is the author of three books already inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame as Classics of Blues Literature: Feel Like Going Home, Searching [...]

Clifford Antone transformed Austin, Texas, into a major blues center in the 1970s and '80s after he founded a nightclub called Antone's to book the legendary bluesmen he loved. Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Albert King, [...]