Charlie Musselwhite’s is the voice of experience. One can hear it on every note of Continental Drifter, where the relaxed feel of the experienced bluesman is evident in the main harmonica riff of “Little Star” and the smooth, Delta-style guitar of “Blues Up the River.” Several of the songs have a strong Cuban-Brazilian feel, and Musselwhite is joined …
With his meteoric run of hits from early 1955 through late 1961, Chicago’s Jimmy Reed reigned as the most popular bluesman of his day, rivaled only by fellow Mississippi transplant B.B. King. By the mid-’60s Reed was playing New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Apollo Theater and touring England as a star. Reed’s sweet, Delta-inflected singing complemented the …
Yeah, Sam Phillips was responsible for some of the most legendary and influential rock ‘n’ roll recordings of all time, but blues was his first and greatest love, and so the Sun Records vaults are full of seminal blues sides from which this 75-track collection draws quite the bounty! Here are just a few highlights: Bear Cat (The …
(VINYL LP) Hoodoo Man Blues is not only Junior Well’s initial LP appearance, it is damn near the first LP by a Chicago blues band. Chess and a few other labels had reissued 45’s by Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howling Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, etc. but virtually no one had tried to capture the Chicago blues …
It’s the biggest night in the blues – now on CD for the first time. Each year in May, the blues world gathers in Memphis to celebrate the best artists in the genre during the annual W.C. Handy Blues Awards Show – the blues version of the GRAMMY(R) awards. As the awards show unfolds, a select few performers …
Play It ‘Til Tomorrow is Nick Moss’ most ambitious recording project yet: two jam-packed discs spotlighting the entire width and breadth of his band’s sonic attack. Longtime fans will immediately recognize the stinging electric blues sound that characterizes the first CD, but on disc two Nick introduces an ‘unplugged’ side that he’s never before tapped in the studio. …
That title could refer to this being a set devoted to the original Sonny Boy (John Lee Williamson, not Rice Miller), or to Sonny Boy’s trailblazing harmonica style. He was one of the first and greatest blues-harmonica masters, and his sound has echoed through the decades (from Walter to Cotton to Junior and beyond). This sprawling set brings …
3-CD box set with with instructional CDs & accompanying book is a comprehensive & easy-to-use lesson on how to learn to play the harmonica. Portnoy, who’s been in the Muddy Waters & Eric Clapton bands, realized other instructional materials put all of the explanations into the text of a book, and the accompanying sound reference consisted only of …
When blues historian Samuel Charters released his three-volume collection of Chicago blues in 1966, it had an impact on the rock and roll world similar to that of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music , exposing a new, predominantly white generation to the sounds of the urban blues Mecca. Each artist came in and recorded 4-6 songs …