The Harmonica Boss
One of the very few good things to come about during this Covid nightmare is the opportunity it affords to dig into the archives. With our usual work of booking…
Standing On The Corner of 12th Street and Vine
Kansas City, Missouri stands at the crossroads where blues and jazz meet. From the wild and wide-open days of the mid 1920s, when Tom Pendergast steadfastly refused to let Prohibition…
Homesick Takes An Early Bath
Here’s a funiosity. On the surface this Press Release from some 46 years ago appears to be about a routine like-for-like replacement for a musician suddenly taken sick mid-tour.…
Detroit Black Bottom
Black Bottom was a predominantly black neighbourhood in Detroit, Michigan. A lot of folk wrongly believe that it got its name from the African-American community that developed there in the…
Eddie C.C. Rider
One Sunday morning, probably in 1984, there was a knock on my front door. I was surprised to find Chicago Blues hooligan Eddie C. Campbell, grinning as he always did,…
Beale Street Blues
From the early 1900s, musicians from the nearby state of Mississippi made their way to Memphis, Tennessee, attracted by the bright lights of Beale Street. Among the more prominent arrivals…
Basie and The Blues
Count Basie in Birmingham (photo by Jim Simpson) A lot of stone blues fans out there are probably unaware of just how blues-rooted the great Count Basie Orchestra was. That…
Whatever Happened To Billy The Kid?
For a man known for taking every opportunity to cuss out his fellow musicians and anyone else who would pay heed – for the merest hint of profanity, an off-colour…
Back To That Same Old Place
The Crown on Station Street, Birmingham, home of the original Henry’s Blueshouse in the late 60s and where it all began. Not long before the pub rang its final last…
Bob The Bear
Bob ‘The Bear’ Hite was the leader and the singer with the massively successful Canned Heat. Formed in Los Angeles in 1965, they always worked at promoting The Blues and,…