Spotlights Archives
Beth Hart’s Gritty, Gut…
Beth Hart is shaping up as the kind of promising newcomer who could make … more »
Churchwood: The Beefheart of …
Churchwood is a blues-rock quintet hailing from Austin, Texas; Churchwood… more »
Re-Documenting the Blues
Austrian collector Johnny Parth launched Document Records in 1986 in orde… more »
Sacred Steel Goes Secular
Sacred steel is one of America’s ultimate outsider musics. Most who… more »
How Elmore James Invented Met…
Elmore James is often demeaned as a one-trick pony — or, in his cas… more »
Big Bill Broonzy: The Blues A…
Consider Big Bill Broonzy. Here’s a guy who wrote such blues standa… more »
The Weird World of One-String…
I saw my first diddley bows in 1996, at the rural Delta home outside Lexi… more »
Who in the World is Ironing B…
With the recent release of his new-old Ninth Wonder of the World of Music… more »
The Unjustly-Overlooked Bulle…
Bullet Records of Nashville doesn’t turn up often in discussions of… more »
Sonny Landreth’s Ambien…
Elemental Journey is the 11th solo album from Sonny Landreth, and by far … more »
The Soul of Ric & Ron Re…
[Listen to the playlist that accompanies this feature here] Ric & Ron… more »
Lazy Lester: The Return of th…
Lazy Lester, the last of the Big Four of swamp blues, is enjoying one of … more »
Hubert Sumlin: The Blues are …
Hubert Sumlin, who died of heart failure on Dec. 4, 2011, at age 80, had … more »
New This Week: Kathleen Edwar…
Hello! Welcome! It starts with a trickle, but always ends in a deluge: th… more »
The Chitlin’ Circuit: C…
For years, the Chitlin’ Circuit – the network of mostly-South… more »
Telling You About the Blues, …
Let me tell you about Let Me Tell You About the Blues, a series of three-… more »
Bobby Blue Bland: The Singer…
Until his health gave out on him, Bobby Blue Bland was the singer’s… more »
Eden Brent and Paul Oscher: T…
Before moving into 2011, I wanted to address a pair of albums that I coul… more »
The Black Fiddler’s Unl…
In the 19th century, the most popular instruments played by black musicia… more »
This Is The (British) Blues
It’s tempting, given the relative paucity of Americans, to suggest … more »
Gus Cannon and the Rise of Ju…
Jug band music originated in Louisville, Kentucky, around 1905, but reach… more »
The Postmodern Blues of Joe L…
Can there be any doubt that Joe Louis Walker has finally arrived? Between… more »
The Mississippi Sheiks
They’re the beneficiaries of a rather unlikely tribute album and a … more »
Texas Guitar
Postwar, electric blues guitar in Texas all derives from T-Bone Walker, s… more »








