West Side Soul ranks among many blues aficionados as one of Delmark Records' two 'desert island discs' from the 1960s along with Junior Wells' Hoodoo Man Blues. Both were fresh, spirited distillations of the blues [...]
Boss Blues Harmonica, released by the GRT Corporation in 1972, was at the time the most comprehensive collection of Little Walter's quintessential blues harmonica recordings ever compiled. It was, literally, the best of Little Walter [...]
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 [...]
Perhaps the most driven, impassioned, and creatively gifted of the young singers and guitarists who became known for the West Side style of Chicago blues in the 1950s and '60s was Otis Rush. The records [...]
“Willie Mae 'Big Mama' Thornton is in my opinion the greatest female blues singer of this and any other decade,” renowned producer Chris Strachwitz proclaimed in the liner notes to the 1965 Arhoolie album Big [...]
“Have some fun!” Those were Hound Dog Taylor's favorite words to his audiences, and in the history of the blues, few performers have so engagingly used the blues to further the cause of having fun [...]
Deep Blues, by Robert Palmer, New York: Viking Press, 1981. In one of the most widely read books on blues ever published, Robert Palmer delineates the 'deep blues' stream that flowed from the Delta up [...]
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 [...]
Regarded by many blues enthusiasts as the finest LP ever recorded as an album session (rather than as a collection of singles from different sessions), Hoodoo Man Blues never made the Billboard charts but over [...]