Month: April 2021

April 30th would have been the 100 and somethingth birthday of the legendary Homesick James. Jim shares his reminisences of the colourful character: Every time that I look back on…

The origins of Texas Blues go back to the early 1900s when a veritable army of the unemployed came to the state to work in the oilfields, ranches and lumber…

Producer of American Blues Legends ’73 Jim Simpson talks us through the stories and characters behind the Big Bear Records cult classic album, featuring Lightnin’ Slim, Homesick James, Snooky Pryor,…

Charles was born in Texas City, Texas, in 1922 and first came to notice as pianist and singer with Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers where his ‘Drifting Blues’ stayed on the…

I was seventeen years old, as fed up with school as it was with me, impatiently awaiting my call-up to National Service in the RAF and increasingly curious about what…

I’m not the only music fan who developed a fascination for certain record labels. Not the majors, of course, they can look after themselves, but it’s a special feeling to…

One afternoon back in 1973, I took an unexpected telephone call. It was Victoria Spivey. Considering that we had only previously been in contact by letter, and that had mostly…

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…

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…

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. However,…