Ben Sandmel is a New Orleans-based journalist, blues researcher/folklorist, and drummer. He has written for publications including Living Blues, Downbeat, The Atlantic and Rolling Stone. Sandmel's book Ernie K-Doe: The R&B Emperor of New Orleans [...]
Gerard Herzhaft’s Encyclopedia of the Blues should be an essential addition to every fan’s bookshelf. It was first published in 1979 in Europe, but after many long trips to the United States, Herzhaft revised his [...]
This is the acclaimed biography of a towering but often overlooked figure in blues history, Big Bill Broonzy. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Bob Riesman’s book illuminates the significant contributions Broonzy made during his 30-year [...]
“That was all we listened to, American blues or rhythm and blues or country blues. Every waking hour of the day was just sitting in front of the speakers, trying to figure out how these [...]
Mary Lou Sullivan’s quest to tell the story of Johnny Winter began when she interviewed him for a local article in 1984. That dream came true in 2003 when she finally secured the access to [...]
Tom Graves has taken the most widely known pre-war blues performer, Robert Johnson, and chipped away at the widespread myths that have been associated with this blues legend. For example, Graves tackles the various ideas [...]
His body of work about Blues Hall of Famer Stevie Ray Vaughan began as a quarterly newsletter in 1993, a website in 1997 and led to three books: The Stevie Ray Vaughan Anthology (1996), The [...]
Peter Guralnick has been called “a national resource” by Nat Hentoff for work that has argued passionately and persuasively for the vitality of this country’s intertwined black and white traditions (Blues, Gospel, Country, Soul and [...]
'There are those of us in African-American literature who feel that we are heirs to two literary traditions, the western written tradition and the African oral one, and try in the fusion to contribute something [...]
Few people have done more for the Blues than Dick Waterman. As agent and manager in the 1960s, his Avalon Productions directed the careers of Son House, whom he personally rediscovered, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip [...]