James Cotton
James Cotton came up under the masters Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2 (Rice Miller), Howlin' Wolf, and Muddy Waters, and emerged in the mid-1960s with his own hard-hitting blues style, one that came to epitomize [...]
Joe, Jules, Lester, and Saul Bihari
As the founders of Modern Records, the Bihari Brothers, Jules, Joe, and Saul, formed the base of one of the most influential R&B labels in Pop history. John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Hadda Brooks, Lightnin' [...]
Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton (Revenant, 2001)
This labor of true love was spearheaded by label cofounder/guitar great John Fahey, though tragically he didn't live long enough to see it completed. It's easily one of the most beautiful collections of recorded music [...]
Blues & Rhythm magazine, founded by Paul Vernon, edited by Tony Burke
The prolific magazine Blues & Rhythm: The Gospel Truth was founded in London in 1984 by British blues collector and pundit Paul Vernon to provide a complementary but more wide-ranging and timely voice to the [...]
Chasin’ That Devil’s Music, by Gayle Dean Wardlow, edited by Edward Komara
This book by Blues scholar Gayle Dean Wardlow reveals the stories behind the great Blues pioneers, some in their own words. As a Mississippi journalist, Wardlow began searching the Delta in the early 1960s for [...]
Honky Tonk, Parts 1 & 2 – Bill Doggett (King, 1956)
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 [...]
I Do Not Play No Rock ‘n’ Roll — Mississippi Fred McDowell (Capitol, 1970)
Mississippi Fred McDowell claimed, 'I do not play no Rock 'n' Roll,' but he certainly had an impact on Rock with recordings such as this LP, released in 1970, playing electric guitar with a young, [...]
Devil Got My Woman — Skip James (Paramount, 1931)
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 [...]
Roy Milton
Though he began his musical career as a drummer, Roy Milton always utilized that sense of swing and rhythm in whatever he played. His 1946 single 'R.M. Blues' for Art Rupe's fledgling Juke Box imprint [...]
Hound Dog — Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton (Peacock, 1952)
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 [...]