Blues People: Negro Music in White America by LeRoi Jones, first published in 1963 by William Morrow, was the first book on blues written by an African-American critic. Jones, who later changed his name to [...]
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 [...]
Down Home was a historic breakthrough album for Z.Z. Hill, Malaco Records, and the whole blues genre, setting a record by staying on the Billboard charts for almost two years after its release in 1982. [...]
One of the most popular and prolific blues recording artists of the 1930s, Walter Davis was born in Grenada, Mississippi, on March 1, 1911. He became a leading figure on the St. Louis blues scene, [...]
Henry C. Speir, a music store owner in Jackson, Mississippi, was responsible for launching the recording careers of most of the greatest Mississippi bluesmen in the 1920s and '30s. In the job he referred to [...]
Though more widely known for his exploits in the worlds of rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll, Ike Turner played an important role in blues history. His first recording session at Sam Phillips' studio [...]